Veterans Day Outrage: Conservatives End 55-Year-Old Practice of Hearings.

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Thu Nov-10-05 02:52 PM
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Veterans Day Outrage: Conservatives End 55-Year-Old Practice of Hearings.

Veterans Day Outrage: Conservatives End 55-Year-Old Practice of Hearings for Vet Groups

On Tuesday - three days before Veterans Day - House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Steve Buyer (R-IN) announced that for the first time in at least 55 years, "veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees."

Remember that Buyer was handpicked by criminally-indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) to replace former veterans committee chairman Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), who had been extremely vocal about the consistent underfunding of veterans causes.

The Disabled American Veterans, the "official voice of America's service-connected disabled veterans," just issued a scathing release calling the move "an insult to all who have fought, sacrificed and died to defend the Constitution." The timing, they said, "could not have been worse."

Read the full release here. (More from The Hill - see below.)

http://thinkprogress.org/2005/11/10/veterans-day-outrage/

department of veterans affairs
Vets lash out at House over budget moves
By Elana Schor

As Veterans Day approaches and the war in Iraq rages on, veterans-service organizations are criticizing House leaders for ending a 55-year legislative tradition, and fearing that Congress will not fill next year’s budget gap for veterans healthcare.

Senators erupted in frustration earlier this year after Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Jim Nicholson conceded that the department was more than $1 billion short for 2005. They will get a chance to vent again today when Nicholson appears before the Veterans Affairs Committee at a hearing on VA hospitals damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
But lobbyists for veterans groups are most incensed at Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.), the new House Veterans Affairs Committee chairman, who announced Tuesday that the groups would no longer have the opportunity to make legislative recommendations at joint House-Senate hearings.

-snip-
The lobbyists dismissed Buyer's explanation that the earlier hearings would allow their groups greater influence on the VA's annual budget. The chairman, the lobbyists charge, is seeking to avoid the public-relations headache of having disappointed veterans groups repeatedly blasting the White House budget.

"Some people don't want to be criticized for being deficient," said Richard Fuller, legislative director for Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA). "What they want to do is get rid of these (joint) legislative presentations because they have become, unfortunately now in the climate on Capitol Hill, very partisan."

http://www.thehill.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/TheExecutive/111005_veteran.html

Details of how the previous House Republican Chair of the Veterans Affairs Committee got thrown not only out of his position as chair but off the committee itself.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Here's how House Republicans support the troops in a time of war: by demoting and embarrassing the leading advocate for soldiers on Capitol Hill.

The crackdown on GOP moderates continued last week as the House leadership ousted Representative Chris Smith as chairman of the Committee on Veterans Affairs for his tireless advocacy of veterans rights. Smith--like House Ethics Chairman Joel Hefley--did his job a little too well.

Smith served on the Vets Committee since arriving in Congress twenty-four years ago and became its chairman in 2001, angering the GOP top brass with his opposition to stingy VA budgets and ability to pass bills across bipartisan lines. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay--who wanted Smith punished two years ago--got his wish when House Speaker Dennis Hastert inserted GOP poodle Steve Buyer as Chairman and took the unprecedented step of throwing Smith off the Vets Committee. (Ironically, Smith is also a major figure in the anti-choice movement.)

Under a rule change adopted in 1995, Hastert can remove any committee chairman he deems incompetent or disloyal--now code words for bucking conservative conformity. During his four-year tenure, Smith authored twenty-two bills benefiting veterans: increasing veteran education funding through the GI bill by 46 percent, allocating $1 billion for homeless vets and $1.4 billion for expanded healthcare programs, and providing an extra $100 million in benefits for surviving spouses.

"It's almost as if no good deed goes unpunished," Smith told the Trenton Times. "In Baghdad, when somebody's bleeding, they're not Democrat or Republican. This is one committee that should have nothing to do with politics." Even Republican operative Bob Novak put fury to paper in a column yesterday. "The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House," Novak wrote.

A top Republican aide justified his party's brutish behavior by praising Smith's replacement, the fiscally hawkish Buyer, as someone who'll be able to "tell the veterans groups, 'Enough is enough.'"

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/outrage?bid=13&pid=2117