Today it's clear to many veterans that the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress think of them on other days of the year besides Veterans Day. They're thinking of veterans as they work to cut off VA healthcare. They're thinking of veterans when they refuse to address lingering health problems from the first Gulf War. They're thinking of veterans when they block full retirement and disability benefits. And they're thinking of veterans when Bush decides, yet again, not to attend a solider's funeral or pay a visit to those who are recovering from injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center just a few miles from the White House.

All that thinking has only hurt veterans of this country. Obviously, they deserve much better. And they deserve our full support.
Since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, 6,239 troops had been wounded in action, according to a recent Pentagon count. Of those, 57% were so severely injured that they were unable to return to duty. Medically retired from active duty military service, they need immediate assistance from the Department of Veterans Affairs healthcare system.

The surge of newly disabled veterans represents a challenge of a magnitude unseen since Vietnam.

President Bush has not submitted an adequate budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs since he took office. Year after year, he has offered budgets that have sought to make veterans pay more and more out of their own pockets for health care. Not only has the Bush Administration tried - and been successful in one case - to dramatically increase copayments for prescription drugs, the Administration has also proposed various methods of generating additional revenue and artificially reducing demand for VA health care.

The Administration uses the projections from these measures to pad their inadequate budget requests for veterans' services so that they can claim budget increases. Some examples of this include the counting of revenue from copayments and third-party insurers as part of the President's request, which has become standard practice for the Administration, and shifting retirement funds from another government agency. The following is a year-by-year summary of the President's budget proposals for veterans' programs.