NEWS FROM….

CONGRESSMAN LANE EVANS

RANKING DEMOCRATIC MEMBER

COMMITTEE ON VETERANS AFFAIRS

    U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

FOR RELEASE: May 5, 2000

WASHINGTON, DC – "It’s no fun saying ‘I told you so’ when veterans health care funding may be on the chopping block," said Congressman Lane Evans (D-IL), the Ranking Democratic Member of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. "The Office of Management and Budget [OMB] now confirms what I warned on April 14. The budget resolution for next fiscal year, adopted by a House-Senate Conference Committee, is a threat to full funding for veterans’ medical care and other high priority programs."

Congress has loaded the budget for fiscal year 2001, which begins on October 1, 2000, "with blue smoke, mirrors and budget gimmicks," Evans said. "It will be almost impossible for Congress to provide the full funding proposed by the Clinton-Gore Administration for veterans’ health care. I expect we’ll hear claims that veterans health care funding is protected, but we risk a funding cut of around eight percent."

In the VA, HUD, and Independent Agencies (VA-HUD) appropriations bill, Lew said, "we can see how the congressional budget forces untenable choices between meeting our commitments to the past, present and future. Overall, this bill is cut by eight percent. If VA medical programs are protected, as both Congress and our budget call for, the cut to remaining programs exceeds 10 percent." Evans says nobody should expect Congress to do that.

Earlier this year, Evans and Veterans Committee Chairman, Bob Stump (R-AZ), jointly endorsed the Clinton-Gore request for a $1.5 billion increase in VA funding for fiscal year 2001. In addition, Evans and Stump also recommended additional increased spending for several VA programs. "With the budget Congress has now approved," Evans said, "research and national cemeteries could certainly receive significantly less funding from the Republican-controlled Congress than was requested by the Clinton-Gore budget."

The Budget Director said the congressional budget will force appropriators "to choose between funding veterans health programs or providing affordable housing to Americans who have not yet shared in our economic prosperity." He noted the President’s budget proposes both increased funding for veterans health and 120,000 new housing vouchers, including 18,000 for America’s homeless, a quarter of whom are veterans. A high of 5.4 million poor families face severe housing needs "in spite of our great prosperity," Lew said.

Republican leaders shared Evans’ assessment of the budget. The Republican Senate Budget Committee Chairman, Pete Domenici [R-NM], says the appropriators will have "a difficult job" staying within the Republicans’ discretionary spending limit. "He’s not kidding," said Evans. "My Republican colleague from Illinois, Rep. John Edward Porter, who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Health, Labor and Education, voted against final passage of the budget along with other Republicans."

Jim Walsh, the Republican Chairman of the VA-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee, has said "expectations are very, very high this year in the research community, at NASA [the National Aeronautics and Space Administration]… and the president proposed a $20 billion increase for HUD." Evans says VA-HUD will have well less than it had for FY 2000 to fund critical programs such as veterans’ health care in FY 2001.

"VA-HUD funding at levels consistent with the congressional budget simply does not provide adequate resources to fund housing, science, environmental protection and veterans programs, along with the many other important programs such as AmeriCorps, our national service program," Lew told the Urban Institute. Evans agrees. "With a large cut in funding for the VA-HUD subcommittee and Chairman Walsh signaling a high priority for funding HUD and NASA," he said, "it will be an uphill fight to get the funding needed for veterans programs."

"The GOP-written budget for next fiscal year is once again a blueprint for tax cuts for the few at the expense of priority programs like veterans health care," Evans continued. "The American people are simply opposed to taking funds needed for programs for our nation’s sick and aging veterans to pay the bill for massive tax cuts. Republican leaders are playing tax cut games with veterans health care again, and it’s just plain wrong."