Election '08: The Local Angle

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Home > The Listening Post > Archives > 2008 > February > 29 > Entry

Barack Obama speaks to Trib on veterans issues

By David Doerr | Friday, February 29, 2008, 10:39 PM

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama held a town hall meeting in Houston with U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco to discuss veterans issues.

After the meeting, I spoke with Obama in a phone interview about how he would address issues facing veterans health care and benefits. Edwards, chairman of the U.S. House appropriations subcommittee over VA spending, has endorsed Obama.

Below is the full transcript from the conversation:

Tribune-Herald:

What was the message you wanted to get across in your town hall meeting in Houston today?

Barack Obama:

The fact that we have a sacred trust with our veterans. When we decide to send them overseas to fight our battles for us, we’ve got to make sure we are fighting for them and the benefits they have earned when they come home. We have not been doing that over the last several years. We continue to see chronic delays in dissaiblity payments. We continue to see our VA facilities not provide the kind of care that so many of veterans need. We are not doing the screening for post-traumatic stress disorder and mental health services that required. Here in Texas you have veterans in South Texas who are having to drive hours to get to nearest VA hospital. We’ve got a lot of middle income veterans who have been denied access to VA services altogether. And this administration has not provided the resources and the attention that is needed to upgrade the system and that is something that is going to be a top priority of mine when I am president of the United States.

Tribune-Herald:

How has the United States done in providing for the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan?

Barack Obama:

We know we have not seen the kinds of screenings for post traumatic stress disorder that is one of the signature injuries of this war. The same is true for traumatic brain injury. I have been pushing on both those fronts, making sure that not only the screening is done but also that the mental health services are then provided.

We are seeing a growth in homeless veterans because we have not done that kind of adequate screening. Another major concern is how we are treating our National Guard men and women and reservists, who are being used essentially like active duty soldiers, but are getting the same benefits and the same care when they come home. I think that is something we are going to have to change.

Finally in respect to faciliteis like Walter Reed (Army Medical Center) or (William Beaumont Army Medical Center) here in Texas, what we are seeing is that those facilities don’t have all the upgrades they need despite the scandal at Walter Reed.

We just found out that President Bush has left out $400 million in appropriations for upgrading these facilities that are going to be coming through in a supplemental (bill) that were not included in the original budget. And that I think is typical for an administration that has low-balled the needs for the majority of our returning service men and women and that is something I intend to change when I am president of the United States.

Tribune-Herald:

You have said that as president that you would see to it that Congress passes on-time budgets for the VA. But even last year when Democrats were in control of Congress the VA budget was delayed for three months because of political squabbling. How will you do it any differently?

Barack Obama:

Typically the squabbling results from this administration not providing enough funding and having battles with a Democratic Congress or at least Democratic Senate and House members like Chet Edwards, who want to make sure that funding is in place.

Chet Edwards:

One thing on the timing specifically. One of the challenges was that the administration was threatening to veto the largest increase in VA health care and benefits funding in the history of the Veterans Administration. That delayed the process.

In addition, when Democratic Congress took over in 2007, the previous Congress had not even passed a VA budget, so we started out with a frozen budget for veterans hospitals during a time of war. So we had to catch up from the previous Congress and then fight the White House.

Let me just say why I am so enthusiastically supporting Sen. Obama. After years and years of presidential budgets that have woefully underfunded veterans and benefits, our veterans deserve a change in Washington. And I want a president who is going to propose budgets that truly honor the sacrifice of America’s heroes.

I have seen these inadequate budgets coming out of Democratic and Republican administrations. In all due respect, and I have respect for former president Clinton and Mrs. Clinton, but during the eight years of the Clinton White House, the VA budget was only increased by 38.3 percent. That wasn’t even close to keeping up with health care inflation and the increasing number of veterans needing that care.

In this administration we have seen inadquate VA budgets. In fact, the present budget from president Bush would cut current services for veterans by $20 billion over the next five years. That is just not right. I am convinced that Sen. Obama is going to be a champion for veterans and military families as president just as he has been a champion as a senator and as a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.

Tribune-Herald:

What are your thoughts on mandatory funding for the VA, a proposal that many veterans groups have advocated for instead of the discretionary funding process that is used now?

Barack Obama:

I think it is important for us to make sure we have on-time and adequate budgets and whatever is needed to put that in place I want to consider. As president I am going to be reviewing the possibilities of creating a mandatory budget versus the current appropriations process. But my priority is which ever way we do it, we’ve got to have on-time budgets and we have to have adequate budgets.

Tribune-Herald:

One of the complaints we hear most often about the VA is how long it takes for veterans to receive their benefits. We have a major benefits office in Waco, which last year got an influx of funding to hire more case workers. Besides more case workers what else can be done to improve the benefits delivery system?

Barack Obama:

Case workers are critical and we’ve got to make sure those caseworkers are in place and properly trained. One of the things that came up at the town hall meeting here in Houston was the fact that a lot of case workers are trained to think their job is to deny benefits. They end up being a lot like the claims officers at an insurance company, and that, in fact, is not the approrpriate approach. There shouldn’t be a bias against providing benefits, there should be an investigation as to what benefits are needed for these veterans. That would be one area that I would like to see improvements because often times I think that creates delays when their initial rejections are then overturned on appeal.

The second thing that we talked about during the town hall meeting is really doing a better job in making sure that every veteran’s military and service records are in electronic form and are digitally transmittable from the (Department of Defense) to the VA immediatley upon discharge.

I can’t tell you how many veterans I met who have stories about injuries they have received but they don’t know where their medical records are and it turns out they were in a warehouse somewhere and there was a fire in St. Louis and now they don’t know what to do and they get the run around.

It should not be the responsibility of an injured service man or woman to be thinking about their records. Their job should be to get well. They should be able to count on DOD to have those records in electronic form and easily transmittable to cut delays and that is going to be a top priority when I am president of the United States.

Chet Edwards:

What we need is a president who will bring the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of the VA together and will say we are going to solve this problem. This problem has been kicked around for years now and I am convinced that as president Barack Obama is going to see that is done. There has been too much talk and too many promises for our veterans and our troops and our military families and he is going to be the president to see that we deliver on the promises that we have made to those who have served our country.

Tribune-Herald:

How would an Obama VA administration differ from a Hillary Clinton VA administration?

Barack Obama:

I don’t want to speak to Sen. Clinton’s plans. They are not ones that I am thoroughly familiar with. I can tell you how they are going to differ from George Bush’s VA and that is we are going to have every service man and woman having records kept that are accurate, that are provided in a timely way. We are going to reduce the backlogs of claims on disability payments. We are going to open up the VA to middle income veterans. We are going to make sure that facilities like Walter Reed are in tip-top shape and are providing the services that are needed. We are going to make sure that national guards men and women and our reservists are treated in a way that reflects the enormous responsibility that has been placed on their shoulders during this conflict.

We are going to make sure that we are upgrading the GI Bill so that when service men and women come home and they are pursuing an education that the benefits that they are provided actually will deliver on the college educations that they need to be successful, and we are going to make sure our budgets are on-time and adequate to accomplish these tasks.

I will be building on the work that I have done since I arrived in the United States Senate on the Veterans Affairs Committees, insisting that we have zero-tolerance for homeless veterans, insisting that we have got screening for post-traumatic stress disorder and insisting that our military family members get the support that they need.

That is something that came up in the town hall meeting that comes up again and again. The spouses and the children of these brave men and women are not getting the support that they need whether it is child care, adequate housing, school facilities that are appropriate. That is something that we’ve really got to work on and I intend to bring together military families from all across the country to meet with me and my secretary of the VA so that we are hearing from them directly because they are heroes just like those who are on the battlefield.

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