All our active duty military deserve the best Commander In Chief and veterans also deserve the best. McCain knows were he’s been and knows the way our country must go…
There is absolutely no debating the fact that with Senator McCain not voting for bills laced with pork and ear marks especially on bills for other veterans; he does put our country first.
If anyone bothered to read or listened to his words – they would already know he wants these billions in wasteful spending to go directly to Veterans Affairs.
While a good president knows there would be no United States without veterans he would-not rightly put veterans in front of our Country (what true veteran would even want that?). Veterans barely survived these last thirty years and our funding has finally been getting on the right track, and with no thanks to this congress for adding billions in back door pork, earmarks and/or amnesty for illegal’s etc…
Straight from McCain:
“I'm not here to tell you that there is a cost that is too high to be paid in the care of our nation's veterans. I will make sure that Congress funds the VA health care budget in a sufficient, timely, and predictable manner. But I will say that every increase in funding must be matched by increases in accountability, both at the VA and in Congress. And this requires an end to certain practices and abuses that serve neither our veterans, our country, nor the reputation of Congress itself.
Exactly because funding VA programs command bipartisan support, some in the Congress like to attach unrelated appropriations and earmarks to VA bills. The result is to mix vital national priorities with wasteful and often worthless political pork. Earmarks show up in bills of every kind, and not just VA bills. That's how we end up budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars for bridges to nowhere, or lesser sums for Woodstock museums and the like. When that earmark for a million bucks to fund a Woodstock museum didn't come through, I don't imagine that many veterans had to change their vacation plans. And the principle here is simple: Public money should serve the public good. If it's me sitting in the Oval Office, at the Resolute desk, those wasteful spending bills are going the way of all earmarks, straight back to the Congress with a veto.
When we make it clear to Congress that no earmark bill will be signed into law, that will save many billions of dollars that can be applied to essential priorities, and above all to the care of our veterans. But reform doesn't end there. We must also modernize our disability system to make sure that eligible service members receive benefits quickly, based on clear, predictable, and fair standards. And we must address the problems of capacity and access within our VA health care system. While this will involve a wide range of initiatives, I believe there is a simple and direct reform we should make right away.
Reform must also recognize that greater care is needed for certain types of injuries. In the Senate, I co-authored the Wounded Warrior Act, which was the first major legislative initiative to address post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury. As president, I will build on this legislation to improve screening and treatment for these severe injuries suffered by many in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The VA must also broaden its care for the women who are entering the armed forces in greater numbers than ever. The growing ranks of women in uniform have left the VA lagging behind in the services it provides. And here the Veterans Care Access Card will prove especially valuable, affording women medical options while the VA improves capacity and expands services.
These are among the elements of my reform agenda for the VA system. And today, as other occasions, I have stated in the plainest, most straightforward terms that the Veterans Health Care Access Card will expand existing benefits. I don't expect this will deter the Obama campaign from misrepresenting my proposals, but lest there be any doubt you have my pledge: My reforms would not force anyone to go to a non-VA facility. They will not signal privatization of the VA. And they will not replace any scheduled expansion of the VA network -- including those facilities designed to serve veterans living in rural and remote areas.”
While McCain is expanding services for Veterans out-side of the VA - And the VA is government run – Obama wants government run universal health care for our whole country. For decades the VA has been underfunded because of our elected officials’, with veterans being such small minority in the whole population of the United States that the VA budget which was only 1.15% of the total federal budget spent in the fiscal year of 2007 (sept. 2006 to 2007) was approx. 80.6 billion. 80.6 billion was only 1.15 percent of the total 2.77 trillion dollars budget spent in fiscal year 2007. One again the VA budget has not been passed and is running on the even lower funding of the (CR) continuing resolution, and Obama wants this for our whole country! Elect McCain/Palin
Text of whole speech here
To use the song that best describes what is going on with the lives of many veterans and VA funding this ones explains it the best:
To see White Snake performing: Here I Go Again
Just click on the youtube video.
Here I Go Again
I don't know where I'm goin
but I sure know where I've been
hanging on the promises in songs of yesterday.
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time
but here I go again, here I go again.
Tho' I keep searching for an answer
I never seem to find what I'm looking for.
Oh Lord, I pray you give me strength to carry on
'cos I know what it means to walk along the lonely street of dreams.
Here I go again on my own
goin' down the only road I've ever known.
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone.
An' I've made up my mind, I ain't wasting no more time.
WE HAVE NO MORE TIME TO WASTE
VOTE FOR CHANGE
VOTE MCCAIN
