South Texas veterans especially those in the Rio Grande Valley need to continue their fight for a Full Service Medical Center. This long sought after facility keeps getting out of range for the veterans. Its always the same excuse, something more important has come up. And its happening again.
This legislative session, veterans have two (2) bills in Congress. They are basically the same but a little different wording and in the request. HB 837submitted by Congressman Ruben Hinojosa (TX-15) simply call for an assurance that the Veterans Administration expand its present facility at Harlingen into a full service medical center. HB 1318, submitted by Congressman Henry Cuellar (TX-25) also asks for an expansion of the present facility to a Full Medical Service Center. In addition it asks that the Secretary of Veterans Affairs shall include in the Strategic Capital Investment Plan of the Department of Veterans Affairs a project to expand the Department of Veterans Affairs medical facility, by adding the following: An urgent care center; Inpatient capability for 50 beds with appropriate administrative, clinical, diagnostic, and ancillary services needed for support; The capability to provide full range services to meet the need of female veterans; and, The capability to provide caregiver support services, including an adult day care providing caregiver respite.
This bills have a sister bill in the Senate filed by Senator John Cornyn (SB 396) and its wording is identical to HB 837. This sister bill was filed first.
So now that there are two bills, how do veterans go about making sure that this time around one of them gets out of committee with a favorable vote? It is going to be difficult seeking legislative relief because of the rising debt crisis and calls for budget slashing cuts. Also, the political shifts in Congress have changed and are creating difficulties. But, the fact of the matter is that we must tackle the problem straight on. Veterans in south Texas have launched what is called Operation 10,10,10 which is a letter writing campaign targeting the Senate Veterans Affair Committee, House Veterans Affairs Committee and the sub-committee on Veterans Health of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Two batches of letters have gone out already (each batch consists of 100 letters). These efforts were initiated before HB 1318 was filed, so it only speaks of HB 837. There has been no response to the letters as far as we know since individual responses will come directly to veterans and not a central letter bank. The office of Senator Isakson states that it takes time to communicate via slow mail. But, not too many veterans have computers to email or fax correspondence to Congress members. Veterans feel that it is something that has to be done. Hopefully other Congressman will join in as co-sponsors of the bills.
In the meantime, veterans must ask their Congressional delegation to designate someone from their office to work on getting these bills passed. It is understood that they have a lot of work on thousands of other issues, but veterans feel that they have been cast aside too many times already. It is real easy to sacrifice the veterans requests due to the fact that veterans are not well organized. At the national level, the American Legion and the Disabled American Veterans have their agendas addressing national level issues affecting veterans as a whole. They have not address our local issue. Local chapter and posts should write their higher up commands and ask and demand support. Again its been a long time and south Texas veterans efforts for obtaining a VA hospital have hit a brick wall. How long will veterans be used, exploited, promised, cast aside, etc. by our elected officials? It is coming to the point that maybe we need to express our displeasure at the polls.
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