Date: 2004-06-22
Speaker: LINDA T. SANCHEZ (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. Mr. Speaker. I wanted to mention one thing in the hearing. you talk about the testimony in the Committee on Armed Services. It just further illustrates how unfair of a burden we really are delegating to. again. these young men and women who are going overseas with the best of intentions. They want to serve their country well. Theywant to do the right thing. They are doing their job under very difficult circumstances and to the best of their abilities. But their leadership at. the top is failing them. It is making the situation such that they are going to have to stay for longer and longer periods of time. They will have to endure worsening conditions and continuing instability. And these are folks that are proud Americans that want to -serve this country. And. again. their leadership from our President is failing them. I just think it is such a tragedy because we are asking these young people to take the brunt of the risk. And when they come back stateside and. hopefully. they come back safely. the way that this administration is thanking them for taking that risk is unbelievable. I want to talk about one brief issue before I have to run. and that is called concurrent receipt. We like to call it the veterans tax or the disabled veterans tax. And what that is is people who have served in the military who have earned a military pension and they are injured in combat and they are receiving disability pay. they have their pension payment deducted by whatever amount they are receiving in disability. So they are not receiving their disability payment and their pension payment as they should. Because they are meant to do. two different things: Disability payments are meant to compensate and help people who have been injured and suffered disabilities from fighting. A pension was meant to give them a cushion for retirement. They are actually deducting the disability payment from the pension payment so the person gets one amount of money when they should actually be getting -both concurrently. and I know that there are Democrats in this body who have been fighting like hell. and pardon my French. to try to eliminate this disabled veterans tax. and we have met full on resistance from the other side of the. aisle and the Bush administration. I think that doing that. to veterans who. again. have sacrificed much. have been honored for their work on the battlefield. is just a hypocrisy. and it is like slamming the door in their face after they have taken the brunt of the risk. and. again. it is a failure of leadership. things like the GI bill that were intended to help veterans come back and reestablish their lives by helping them fund a college education. Today is actually the 60th anniversary of the GI bill. We have seen the GI bill pretty much gutted to what it initially was so that even with the GI bill help. many kids coming back from theater having served. overseas in combat just do not have the kind of benefits they do to pick up their lives and move on with a college education and try to move into other fields. Again. I just think it is shameful that this administration is failing our young people in such a way.