Progress Illinois

Here's a ringing endorsement for the ongoing war in Iraq. Despite describing itself as the "largest Iraq and Afghanistan veterans organization in America," Vets For Freedom (VFF) had some trouble scaring up like-minded folks to rally at the vice presidential candidates debate in St. Louis tomorrow night. So they decided to offer some local frat boys money to pose as war supporters.

The Huffington Post reports:

In an email obtained by the Huffington Post, Vets for Freedom field staffer Laura Meyer offered a fraternity at St. Louis University a "sizable donation" -- plus free lunch -- if it could use their pledges to demonstrate outside the VP debate.

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The U.S. Veterans Affairs Administration released the first portion of a three-part report on its Marion, Illinois VA hospital yesterday and found the facility was in desperate need of leadership and oversight.

In the last two years, there have been 19 deaths caused by substandard care at the hospital. Of those, nine have been at least partially linked to one surgeon, Dr. Jose Veizaga-Mendez, who administrators knew was not properly credentialed. The report also found that a former medical center director ignored troubling patient incident reports, failed to establish a follow-up process for patient deaths, and allowed financial considerations to predominate quality-of-care issues.

This follows a VA Inspector General's report that came to similar conclusions earlier this year. Both of Illinois' senators have continually pressured the VA to stop dragging its feet on the investigations into the tragedies of 2006-07 and the failed management-labor relationship at Marion. "This report confirms," Barack Obama said yesterday, "that a failure in leadership and a breakdown of safeguards allowed these tragedies to occur at the Marion VA." Democratic Rep. Jerry Costello and GOP Rep. John Shimkus joined the chorus as well.

Marion is a bad seed in an otherwise well-run system, so privatization is certainly not the answer. But to provide the care wounded soldiers deserve, the VA needs to send better bureaucrats to Southern Illinois.

Late last night, we reported that 11th District GOP congressional candidate Marty Ozinga put out a robocall attacking his Democratic opponent Debbie Halvorson at the same time she was visiting her stepson, Jay Bush, at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.  Bush was flown there after being seriously injured while serving in Afghanistan.

Today, VoteVets.org -- a political advocacy organization headed by veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars -- put out the following response:

“This is one of the most tactless moves I’ve ever seen in politics,” said Jon Soltz, Iraq War Veteran and Chairman of VoteVets.org.  “The pain and anxiousness that family members feel when their loved one is injured, wounded, or lost in combat cannot be overstated.  At times like these, military families deserve some time and space, even if they are candidates for office.  It wouldn’t kill Ozinga to show some class by wishing Ms. Halvorson and her stepson well, and laying off the attacks for a couple of days.  It’s just a simple sign of respect to do so when your opponent is going through a time like this.” [...]

“We obviously wish Captain Bush a speedy recovery, and we thank him for his sacrifice to our nation and for our security.  And, our thoughts are with Ms. Halvorson and her husband as they tend to their son,” added Soltz.  “I only wish Marty Ozinga would have some class and show the same respect to our troops and military families.”

Over the weekend, Chicago Public Radio's Chip Mitchell caught up with Jason, a 33-year-old former Marine from Wisconsin who served in Iraq. During the past four years, the veteran has lived on the streets in and around Chicago's Greektown, a life he thought unimaginable when he signed up to fight. After his discharge, he wasn’t mentally prepared to work and because his parents were gone and his marriage had fallen apart, he had no safety net:

JASON: I’m on food stamps, man. I have to live out of soup kitchens. I have to panhandle. I have to ask people for leftovers to eat.

Homelessness among veterans is not a new phenomenon. According to Mitchell's report, the VA estimates that on any given night 154,000 U.S. veterans lack shelter, most of whom served in Vietnam. And while a New York Times article from November 2007 found that just over 400 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have turned up homeless, that number will undoubtedly grow as more soldiers return from the battlefield:

Experts who work with veterans say it often takes several years after leaving military service for veterans’ accumulating problems to push them into the streets. But some aid workers say the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans appear to be turning up sooner than the Vietnam veterans did.

“We’re beginning to see, across the country, the first trickle of this generation of warriors in homeless shelters,” said Phil Landis, chairman of Veterans Village of San Diego, a residence and counseling center. “But we anticipate that it’s going to be a tsunami.”

So how is possible that someone who risked their live to serve their country could simply fall through the cracks?

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Today the Sun-Times' editorial board came out in support of Sen. Jim Webb's (D-VA) legislation to modernize the G.I. Bill. The proposal (which passed the Senate last week) would offer increased benefits to U.S. soldiers returning from today's battlefields. Specifically, It would finance their education at a four-year college and provide them with a $1,000 bonus for every three years served. The measure is now pending in the House as part of the larger war funding bill. Meanwhile, President Bush has threatened to veto Webb's legislation, citing his preference for a separate, GOP-sponsored measure that features more restrictive education benefits.

The argument for Webb's G.I. Bill is essentially a moral one: our country owes a greater debt to veterans than is it currently paying. There are also practical considerations: our armed forces are increasingly stretched thin and the proposal would create better incentives for enlistment. Furthermore, the Sun-Times points to the potential economic benefit of supporting the legislation:

The original GI Bill, in the years after World War II, helped veterans forge careers and made our nation stronger.

For every dollar spent on those veterans, the government recouped $5 to $12 in taxes paid by college graduates with higher incomes, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Assuming such results could be replicated, the estimated $2 billion cost of modernizing the G.I. Bill should be though as a long-term stimulus plan -- not simply a one-time pay-off to returning soldiers.

A Rand Corporation study released in April found that a startling 20 percent of military service members who have returned from Iraq and Afghanistan — 300,000 in all — report symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or major depression, yet only slightly more than half have sought treatment. As soldiers complete multiple tours, the rate of stress-induced illnesses grows even higher. The director of the National Institute of Mental Health went so far as to predict that by the end of the war, the number of suicides among Iraq and Afghanistan vets may exceed the combat death toll thanks to inadequate care.

Such devastating figures highlight the importance of veteran care, an issue that Tammy Duckworth has been focusing on since losing her congressional race in 2006. (She was appointed director of the Illinois Veterans' Affairs Department shortly after the election.) Be sure to check out her Memorial Day interview with the Chicago Tribune's Judith Graham in which she discusses the needs of Illinois veterans, the recently-launched Illinois Warrior Assistance Program, and her own personal bout with PTSD:

I think I probably do [have PTSD]. Recently, the other pilot in my aircraft sent me an e-mail and said he was deploying back to Iraq. And that night, I closed my eyes and (in my dream) I was in Iraq. It’s a dream I have over and over. I’m living an entire day in Iraq. I fly missions. I’m working. There’s nothing scary that happens. I’m not reliving getting shot down. It’s actually very mundane. But I’m working hard (in the dream) and when I wake up, I’m usually exhausted because I’ve just spent eight hours on the job in my sleep. And I actually have a little bit of joy and sadness right away. Because in my dreams I still have my legs and I’m flying still, something I love to do. And then, of course, I experience the sadness that it wasn’t real.

Our service members need to know these are combat wounds. The same as if you’d been shot or had your legs blown off. I just hope they don’t wait to come forward and get help before it’s too late.

Rep. Bill Foster has sponsored new legislation to save the families of active military personnel from added financial hardship. The project is based on the "Illinois Military Family Relief Fund," a successful aid program started in the Prairie State that distributes money to financially strapped families whose breadwinner is stationed overseas. The Illinois program is funded by voluntary contributions from taxpayers on their state tax returns. Foster's plan would offer all Americans a similar option on their federal returns. The money would be distributed by the U.S. Defense Department. The Associated Press reports that the Illinois model has been instrumental in giving military personnel and their families at home financial peace of mind:

The Illinois Military Family Relief Fund provides grants every six months to applicant families whose breadwinner is serving in uniform and face financial hardship, with allocations ranging from $1,000 to $4,000 per year depending on need, officials said.

To date, the fund has distributed $6.2 million to more than 11,000 military families across the state.

If Foster's National Military Family Relief Fund gains momentum it could be implemented as early as next year.

As the Senate passed the new G.I. Bill today by a veto-proof majority, 13th District congressional candidate Scott Harper held a press conference calling attention to the voting record of his opponent, Republican Rep. Judy Biggert, who opposed the bill in the House.

From the Harper campaign press release:

“Judy Biggert’s vote against the GI Bill is outrageous,” said Harper. “Time and again, she has been on the wrong side of these important issues and her vote on this recent legislation is a failure of leadership.”

In addition to her vote on the GI Bill, Harper also criticized Biggert for numerous other votes against veterans, including in 2007, when she came out against a budget that would have increased funding for veterans’ health care by $6.7 billion. She also voted against expanding TRICARE to provide health benefits for National Guard members and reservists, and she voted down the Webb Amendment to increase time off between combat tours overseas.

Harper was joined by veterans of Desert Storm and the Vietnam war in supporting the new G.I. Bill. The group has begun circulating a petition to encourage expanding veterans benefits.