Veterans paid the price for our freedom, opportunities and rights.

There Larry Canard goes again. So Trump hated vets, right? https://www.militarytimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/08/26/president-trump-has-been-a-champion-for-americas-veteran-community/

This is a very flawed analysis written by a Trump Administration political appointee. It proves nothing. Trump did nothing to advance the quality or availability of care to Veterans, other than to re-authorize a program the allowed a small number of Veterans on waiting lists to seek private care at VA expense under limited circumstances. The vast majority of Veterans are not on waiting lists. The only ones who were or are are those who have the where-with-all to pay for their own care and do not have injuries or diseases caused by or incurred in active-duty service. The VA accepts Veterans for health care based on priority groups. Those injured or who become ill in the line of duty are "Service-Connected." Most of these are in priority group one. They are always first to get care. Non-Service-Connected Veterans whose incomes and other resources give them options to VA care are in the last priority group and are those likely to end up on waiting lists. All things being equal, they never are.

Trump did way more for vets than any president in modern US history, including Biden.

Reagan took credit or increasing the VA's budget. Then, he "sequestered," all of the increase, not allowing VA to spend the money. It made his deficits look lower.

I can see why you easily fell off-topic Larry. But please try to stay on point. Reagan was the mechanism used to point out a larger problem, which is your TDS.

The GOP was trying to use a version of the Reagan "Sequester," trick. You give the money with one hand, then block the path to using the money with the other hand. The fact is the VA health care budget is used to make sure facilities, equipment, supplies and personnel are in place for top priority Veterans. Returning to a system of facilities and personnel, etc earmarked for a discreet group would be a return to the very costly and inefficient system of "service-connected clinics," the VA abandoned in the 1970s. This law makes more Veterans eligible for care in priority group one. They will always get care.

400 BILLION going to other things than Vet healthcare... OOPS

They were offered the opportunity to amend the bill to make sure that this unlikely use of the money would not occur. Rather than "earmark," the money, a common practice, they chose to oppose the bill they had supported. They wanted to avoid giving Biden a "win," and held Veterans as POWs in their war on the middle class.

Yes... your BS doesn't hold up under scrutiny...

Says a guy who never was responsible for administering budgeted federal money for VA programs to the guy with decades of experience. There's nothing new under the Sun. The GOP pretends to support the military, Cops and Veterans, cuts their budgets and makes up phony excuses for doing so.

yup... bloated government is the best... LOL

We consistently provided health care for about two-thirds of what it cost in the private sector. And it wasn't just eliminating profits. We were always looking for better ways of doing things. The success of negotiating lower costs for drugs was not mandated by law. It was a proposal for cost control from a VA employee. The VA promotes employee initiatives aimed at cost savings that were better and more expansive than any private sector company I ever worked for.

Sorry... but Big Government is and always will be very wasteful...

I met Dr. Tom Starzl back in the late 1970s. Like many famous researchers, almost all of his work was funded by "Big Government." Millions of people who are alive today because of his work in Liver, Pancreas and multi-organ transplantation, might have a different definition from you on what is "wasteful."

I don't know where you live, but most housing can be financed with G.I. Loans. The real estate booms of the 1960-1970 period are in no small part because of programs like the G.I. loan program. Millions upon millions of Veterans and their families who have known the security and satisfaction of private home ownership, might disagree with your definition of "wasteful."

In 1961 we sent a Veteran into space for the first time. By 1969 we had developed the technology to send three Veterans to the Moon and have two of them touchdown on the surface. A survey of the engineers and technicians who worked on these programs found that most of them were Veterans and many of them got their college degrees using the G.I. Bill.

The information age is the child of the space age. The computer you use to insult me would not be possible, if not for all the "bloated," government spending you rail against.

One person's waste is another person's medical, economic or scientific breakthrough.

Sorry... it's not... keep trying to justify it...