PLATFORM : The Needs of Vets

The government over the past decade has pared Veterans Administration budget allotments for the medical care of disabled veterans to its lowest level in years. Veterans with combat-related injuries must wait up to four months just to see a doctor at a VA hospital.

Will our sons and daughters fighting the Persian Gulf War suffer the same indignity? Unless an overhaul of VA policy and budget allotment is enacted soon, they almost certainly will. The VA can’t possibly cope with a whole new generation of disabled veterans when current budget allotments give them the limited capacity to deal with the needs of only a fraction of those veterans from three previous wars.

We can no longer view our disabled veterans as a blot on our social consciousness -- to be abandoned in times of fiscal restraint. For the sake of young Americans in the trenches of Saudi Arabia, who now face the greatest trial of their lives, I pray our commitment looks far beyond the horizon.