The problems at Walter Reed that were rightly pointed out a few months back became a club in the hand of the media and their favorite political party. It gave them ammunition to attempt to show how much they care about the men and women who have and currently serve our country.
Of course, they only really used the club to beat the current administration over the head with, but some improvements were made and that is one good thing to come out of the story.
One of the points whipped around at that time was the budget for the VA, with the media and their favorite party bantering about how it needs to be increased. Giving more money to the VA is a good thing, even if the administrative costs are eating much of it up, it eventually trickles down to more vets served better.
So why is the Democrat Party letting their second-most vocal woman in the Senate take $4 Billion away from the VA if they claim to care so much about fully-funding the VA?
Because they think she can do it quietly and get away with it.
The pork here revolves around the West Los Angeles Medical Center, though this is no average veterans’ facility. Donated to the government in 1888, the center is 387 sprawling, prime real-estate acres in the middle of tony West L.A. More than twice the size of the National Mall, it is surrounded by the mansions and playgrounds of the city’s elite, including the Bel Air Country Club and the Beverly Hills estates of Sylvester Stallone, Barry Bonds and Tim McGraw (to name a few).
Huge portions of the facility are also a veritable ghost town. It isn’t just that 387 acres is an enormous space, and far larger than any one veteran’s community in today’s America might ever need. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Los Angeles County also falls on the lowest end in terms of the percentage of veterans living in the area. Nationally, veterans make up about 12.7% of people over the age of 18; the county’s average is below 8.5%. Of 91 buildings on campus, 21 are today partially or wholly vacant. Meanwhile, the number of enrolled veterans in that facility is expected to decline by nearly a quarter over the next 20 years.
Which is why, when the Department of Veteran’s Affairs set up a process in 2002 to study its infrastructure and rationalize its facilities, it designated the West L.A. center as one of 18 sites that might be downsized, any extra land being used to produce more revenue for veterans’ needs. Under law, 108 acres of the L.A. site can’t be touched, but the remaining 200-plus acres sit in the middle of a highly desirable real estate area and could yield significant financial gain. The VA has yet to make any decisions, but according to government estimates, even a modest reuse of the property–say leasing out excess acreage–could result in an extraordinary $4 billion for better care for veterans everywhere.
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Ms. Feinstein, who in the last election received some of her largest donations from the rich area, has been only too happy to come to its defense. She honed in on the military construction and veterans affairs bill–a sensitive spending vehicle that few Republicans would dare vote against, and that President Bush would be loath to veto. She then slipped in an earmark provision that would bar the VA from disposing or leasing any of the ground. Thus a potential $4 billion worth of help and aid for our nation’s veterans goes bye-bye in the name of preserving a view for those Hollywood actors who play veterans in the movies.
The Dems only care as far as their deep pocketed friends do.