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Originally Posted by Yellbird
"In Bush’s first three years funding for the Veterans Administration increased 27%. And if Bush's 2005 budget is approved, funding for his full four-year term will amount to an increase of 37.6%.
In the eight years of the Clinton administration the increase was 31.7%
Those figures include mandatory spending for such things as payments to veterans for service-connected disabilities, over which Congress and presidents have little control. But Bush has increased the discretionary portion of veterans funding even more than the mandatory portion has increased. Discretionary funding under Bush is up 30.2%.
By any measure, veterans funding is going up faster under Bush than under Clinton."
I would suggest you do some checking on facts that are thrown around which at best are misleading, If I were to say a person would be given a raise of $100.00 per week next year and ended up giving them only $50.00 they would say they took a pay cut. They certainly didn't get a hundred dollar raise but to say they took a pay cut is an Illusion. If you look at the hard numbers you'll find that is almost normal regarding goverment numbers.
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Could you possibly attribute your quotation to someone so we can all agree that it's from a neutral third party? Even if it is, ask yourself, is the increase keeping up with inflation? How many more vets are there due to Iraq and Afganistan (i.e. what is the per-troop amount?).
Here are some quotes I found:
“The White House quickly backpedaled Thursday on Pentagon plans to cut the combat pay of the 157,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan after disclosure of the idea quickly became a political embarrassment.” [Source: San Francisco Chronicle, 8/15/03]
“The VA Under Secretary for Health testified last year that it requires an average yearly medical care increase of 12% to 14% to meet the cost of inflation and mandated salary increases. However, $310 million is only 1.2% more than the FY 2004 appropriation. The Administration’s budget proposal relies far too heavily on budget gimmicks, major cuts in long term care programs, higher out-of-pocket costs for veterans, and not enough on appropriated dollars.” [Source: Paralyzed Veterans of America, release, 2/3/04]
"The FY '06 budget proposal calls for $33.4 billion in discretionary funding -- mostly for health care -- and $37.4 billion in mandatory funding, mostly for compensation, pension and other benefit programs. This represents an increase of 2.7 percent over this year's discretionary budget." [
www.news-medical.net 2/05]