Honoring Our Nation's Veterans

Honoring Our Nation's Veterans
Wednesday, November 10, 2004

On this Veterans' Day, we honor our veterans across the country and we remember not only those who have served throughout history, but also those serving today around the world. Minnesotans are among those who are serving with courage with their fellow servicemen and women under extremely dangerous circumstances.

It is critical that we make the needs of all of our veterans and soldiers a priority. These are commitments that we must honor Veterans Day and every day. Veterans deserve full funding of veterans' health care, full concurrent receipts and all veterans' benefits protected.

To honor our national promise to our veterans, Democrats have introduced the comprehensive "Salute to Veterans and Armed Forces Act." This bill would improve services for our men and women in uniform today and provide long overdue benefits for the veterans and military retirees who have already served.

We have had some successes, but work remains to fulfill the obligation to our veterans:

We have fought to end the Widow's Tax, also known as the Survivor Benefits Penalty. Ending this tax is long past due. Spouses have endured much on the home front. Thanks to Democratic efforts, this tax is finally coming to an end.

We want to invest in veterans' health care. Each year Democrats offer budgets investing billions of dollars more for veterans' health care, which veterans' groups say is critically needed to maintain the care of our injured, sick and aging warriors. Right now, thousands of veterans are waiting six months or longer for an appointment at VA hospitals. It is time for Congress to provide adequate funding for veterans health care, particularly as we have a growing number of veterans each day. We are also working to expand access to health care for the National Guard and Reserves.

We oppose new cost increases for veterans' health care. Every year, Republican leaders have proposed to increase the cost of health care for veterans. Their budgets have raised health care costs for more than 1 million veterans, increasing drug co-payments and imposing new enrollment fees that will cost veterans over $2 billion over five years. This will result in driving about 200,000 veterans out of the system, and discourage another 1 million veterans from enrolling. We strongly oppose new fees and increases in prescription drug co-payments for our veterans.

We are working to end the Disabled Veterans' Tax. Republican leaders have blocked efforts to fully repeal the Disabled Veterans Tax for all veterans, which forces disabled military retirees to give up one dollar of their pension for every dollar of disability pay they receive. Instead, they have enacted a plan that takes ten years to phase in benefits and requires two-thirds of military retirees with service-connected disabilities to continue to pay the Disabled Veterans Tax. Democrats want to provide full payment of both retirement pay and disability compensation to all 500,000 disabled military retirees and want the change to take effect immediately.

We honor our military families. Democrats want to give a $1,000 bonus for soldiers returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, to make military pay increases permanent for those in imminent danger and away from their families, to continue targeted pay raises for enlisted personnel, and to extend the child tax credit to the hundreds of thousands of military families left out of the recent tax cuts because, as service members, they do not earn enough money. Democratic efforts to increase family separation and imminent danger pay for men and women in uniform deployed around the world have finally succeeded despite opposition.

We stand ready to move forward to provide all the support our veterans and military retirees have earned. We will not abandon our fight for America's veterans. On the battlefield, the military pledges to leave no soldier behind. As a nation, let it be our pledge that when they return home, we leave no veteran behind.

On this Veterans Day, we resolve to remember and renew. We remember and honor the sacrifices of our forces and their families. And we renew our national promise to fulfill our sacred obligations to those who have worn our nation's uniform.