Vets deserve better than lip service

It’s a phrase we hear all the time. You have probably said it a time or two. “Thank you for your service.”

It’s a verbal handshake; an acknowledgment of appreciation. It’s the very least one can do to support current and former members of the military.

Unfortunately, another phrase often heard by vets when dealing with the VA is “thank you for your patience.” And all too often that phrase becomes, “We’re sorry for your loss.”

In the wake of two wars, Afghanistan being the longest in our history, the U.S. has produced a lot of veterans. Those veterans, in turn, have produced a tremendous demand for benefits.

And that demand has produced a backlog that would test the patience of Job. Wait times of a year or more to get into a clinic are not unheard of, and in some cases, veterans have died waiting to get treatment.

But don’t worry, vets. The folks in D.C. have your back and are springing into action.

Well, “springing” may not be completely accurate. Having been aware of this growing problem since the middle of the Bush presidency, the words “tripping, bumping and stumbling” seem more appropriate. In any event, Washington is now on the job and ready to get to the bottom of this problem.

Of course, on Capitol Hill, getting to the bottom of anything means stirring up a smoke screen of blame and scandal for political benefit. Witness Benghazi, where the focus has been on who said what, when, instead of who did what and how to keep it from happening again.

Congress is now investigating the V.A., and they have uncovered some pretty disturbing stuff. For instance, the V.A. hospital in Phoenix had two waiting lists.

One was the official list that showed veterans being processed and receiving care in a relatively short time. Another was an unofficial list that had to be traversed before you could be placed on the official list. That one could take a year to get through. An estimated 40 vets died before they could get help.

That recipe for book cooking has been copied by at least 10 other states. It’s important that these things be brought to light, but they do little to alleviate the problem.

Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Jeff Miller, R-Florida, introduced House Resolution 4031, a bill that would authorize the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Eric Shinseki, the ability to fire any senior executive for not doing their job.

Umm ... Shinseki is the head of the V.A. Couldn’t he already fire people? And if not, why not? I must be missing something here, because I’m not really sure what this bill hopes to accomplish.

In the meantime, veterans are waiting a year or more to receive service. Some never make it through the mountains of paperwork. Some die in the process.

We in the media are culpable in this, too. Fox News says the scandal just highlights Obama’s ineffectual leadership and presents the GOP with another target to paint on the Democrats this fall. Of course the fact that our Senator Begich sponsored a bill to forward-fund V.A. benefits to insulate them from budget stalemates and government shutdowns was never mentioned.

On the left, Sarah Jones, writing for PoliticusUSA, lays the blame at the feet of the Bush administration for throwing two wars and not paying for either of them. While she admits that the budget for the V.A. has increased 235 percent since 9-11, she says that Congress has underfunded benefits because they allocated less then Obama requested.

Actually, Ms. Jones should know that’s how things work in Washington. Politicians rarely get everything they ask for.

But what the heck. If there’s blame to be assigned and points to be scored ...

The maddening part of this is that, for the most part, we know what needs to be done. The V.A. was mired in an antiquated system that shuffled paper from one office to another. Applications would have to be mailed from one building to another or one state to another. A process that can be accomplished in seconds with a few keystrokes could take days or even months.

Shinseki has been trying to digitize the process. But how much time should this take? We do have warehouses full of paper to be scanned, collated and filed, but the V.A. has been at this for over five years now. The hope is that the process will be complete by 2015.

It’s easy to assign blame. I’m doing some of that in this column. The problem is that it shifts focus from the real issue.

Veterans are becoming sicker and, in some cases, dying while we are busy rearranging deck chairs. If anyone can walk into an emergency room and get the care they need, why can’t we do the same for our vets?

There is no excuse for letting someone die from inattention. Particularly if that someone has risked their life for you.

So veterans of World War II, of Korea and Vietnam, of Granada and Panama, of both Iraq wars and Afghanistan: Thank you for your service. Now take a number.

Chuck Legge is the Frontiersman’s longtime editorial cartoonist. His Valley Voices opinion pieces appear every four weeks.