Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 9, 1995 TAG: 9504200004
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WILLIAM SAFIRE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
With VA nursing homes costing the taxpayer twice as much as comparable community facilities;
With VA disability payments going to drug addicts to help them continue to buy illicit drugs;
With a VA surgeon providing a penile implant, at a taxpayer cost of $5,800, to a convicted child molester;
With all this, a few courageous Republicans out to save taxpayers $17 billion this year dared to hold back $200 million for veterans-only clinics.
What happened? Bill Clinton, famous avoider of military service, went all out enlisting in the legion of panderers to the veterans lobby.
``The White House doors have been open to veterans as never before,'' he assured the Veterans of Foreign Wars, though 96 percent of the males on his White House staff have never worn a uniform.
That hypocrisy bothers John Wheeler, who was for a decade chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund: ``Clinton wants the vets to be victims, not partners, and is trying to make money equal acceptance and respect.''
To buy the lobby's support, Clinton told the VFW: ``Our administration is pushing for 1.3 billion more for the Department of Veterans Affairs over the next five years.''
``We have consistently looked to veterans,'' Clinton said, ``to help shape our policy for veterans.'' His confessed sellout to a pressure group, made as a boast, was true: his Vet secretary is a former vet lobbyist.
Secretary Jesse Brown told the same audience: ``Just last month [February], William Safire called for the elimination of VA hospitals. He calls veterans' programs a `sacred cow.' Excuse me, Mr. Safire, but you have got a cow mixed up with a lot of bull.'' Big laugh.
``Mr. Safire refers to me as a `lobby fox in the hen house.' ...I say to you, the head of VA should always be an advocate! He should be a lobby fox. I am your lobby fox. And I am proud of it!''
Then this combat hero blazed away with suppressing fire: ``Who are these people attacking veterans programs? Have they served in the military?'' Clinton and 96 percent of his profoundly civilian male staff might have winced at that, but Secretary Brown charged ahead at critics: ``I do not think they have the right to pass judgment ... they should do the right thing and simply step aside.''
Under this new credential requirement, only welfare mothers can criticize welfare. Only educrats can suggest ending free lunches to children of the rich. And only veterans can call for replacement of a third-rate federal hospital bureaucracy with a voucher system to enable deserving vets to buy private care.
Applying Clinton's criterion, I have standing: a draftee in 1952, two years in the U.S. Army. Rose to corporal; never heard a shot fired in anger.
Most of us veterans never claimed that every ailment we suffered since was ``service-connected''; nor did we rip off our fellow taxpayers for ``disability'' checks while able to work full time; nor did we take advantage of the federal largess and job preference that the pressure groupies won. We're citizens first and veterans second, not professional lobbyists whipping up victimhood.
Brandishing this unheroic credential now deemed essential, let me return to Clinton's pandering:
House Republicans, spooked by the president's vote-purchasing speech, refused to be out-veteraned. They coughed up all the money demanded by the vet-lobby's highwaymen.
But then, to get even, GOP budget-cutters took the same $200 million out of Americorps, the subsidized voluntarism that is the Clintonites' favorite boondoggle. Clinton countered by threatening to veto the whole rescission bill.
The upshot: Of the $17 billion that the Republicans want to save this year, Clinton will block the rescission of all but $6 billion.
Why will he permit that $6 billion to be saved? Because that is how much additional spending is needed for earthquake relief in California. Combined saving: zero. With Gov. Pete Wilson's competition looming, Clinton will cut almost anything to come up with money for California.
But not welfare for veterans. That most sacred cow causes politicians to tremble and dulls the impetus to prick the balloon of spending.
- New York Times News Service
by CNB