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SUMMARY: 2009 MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS

 The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill sends a clear message to America’s servicemen and women, their families, and our veterans that we all appreciate and respect their service and sacrifice.

It builds upon the efforts of the last two years, as this Congress has made veterans its #1 priority.  In 2007, Congress passed 3 separate appropriations bills that increased total funding for Veterans medical care by $11.8 billion, the largest increase in the 77 year history of the Veterans Administration, so that veterans may receive the quality of care that they deserve.  The emergency supplemental passed by Congress this year continues those efforts with further increases for VA medical care and rewarding those who serve by expanding the GI bill to provide a full, four-year college benefit to veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.   

This year’s bill builds on those accomplishments.  It starts by rejecting the President’s proposal to cut the Department of Veterans Affairs construction by $788 million, so that the Department has the resources it needs to address buildings that have fallen into disrepair.

It goes on to address the critical needs facing veterans medical care as soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan, building on the historic increases provided last year by:

• Increasing enrollment of Priority 8 veterans by 10 percent, ensuring that we keep our commitment to all veterans
• Enable the Department to hire roughly 2,100 additional claims processors to work down the backlog of benefits claims and to reduce the time to process new claims
• Providing veterans with advanced prosthetics
• Making substantial increases to mental health and substance abuse
• Increase Gas Mileage Reimbursement Rate from 28.5 cents to 41 cents per mile for veterans traveling long distances for care after more than doubling it this year.

For active duty service members and their families, the bill provides $336 million above the President’s request for quality of life projects that will directly improve living conditions and health care delivery.

The subcommittee took its oversight responsibility seriously, holding 19 hearings and one briefing to examine the President’s request.

Bill Total

2008 Enacted:                        $63.9 billion

President’s Request:             $69.3 billion

Committee Mark:                  $72.7 billion

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION: $24.8 billion, $400 million above the President’s request and $4.2 billion above 2008.  The large increase is mostly due to the costs of implementing Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) and plans to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps.

Quality of Life Initiative: $336 million, not requested by the President, to continue a quality of life initiative for troops and their families started in the 2008 supplemental including: nearly $200 million for five new trainee and recruit housing facilities for the Army and Marine Corps to improve the barracks soldiers and marines live in when they train; and $136 million for medical military construction and planning activities to upgrade substandard medical treatment facilities.  For years, service members and their families have said that quality of life issues are their top priority, but they have been neglected by this Administration.

2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) and Re-stationing: $9.1 billion, $1.8 billion above 2008 and the same as the President’s request, to implement base closures and realignments, and support the re-stationing of 70,000 troops and their families from overseas to the United States.  The bill also funds planning for the eventual relocation of 8,000 marines and 9,000 dependents from Okinawa to Guam.

Growing the Force: $5.6 billion in military construction and family housing, to support the Administration’s program to increase the size of the Army by 65,000, the Marine Corps by 27,000, and the Guard and Reserve by 9,200 personnel.  

1990 BRAC: $473 million, $178 million above 2008 and $80 million above the President’s request, to address an estimated $3.5 billion backlog in needed environmental cleanup for bases that were closed during the four previous BRAC rounds as identified in most recent Defense Environmental Programs Annual Report. 

Military Housing: $3.2 billion, $300 million above 2008, to further eliminate inadequate military housing.

DEPARMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS: $47.7 billion, $4.6 billion above 2008 and $2.9 billion over the President’s request, for veterans medical care, claims processors, and facility improvements.

Veterans Health Administration: $40.8 billion, $1.6 billion over the President’s request and $3.9 billion above 2008, for veterans medical care.  The Veterans Health Administration estimates they will treat more than 5.8 million patients in 2009 including more than 333,275 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan (40,000 more than 2008).

Medical Services: $30.9 billion, $1 billion above the President’s request and $2.8 billion above 2008, to improve access to medical services for all veterans.

Increase Enrollment of Priority 8 Veterans: $400 million, not requested by the President, to start enrolling 10 percent of Priority 8 veterans.  An estimated one half of all uninsured veterans are Priority 8.  Priority 8 veterans have not been enrolled since 2003 as part of an Administration effort to cut costs.

Mental Health and Substance Abuse: $3.8 billion for specialty mental health care and $584 million for substance abuse programs.

Fee-Based Care: $200 million, not requested by the President and not funded in 2008, for fee-based services to improve access to care where VHA services are not available.

Beneficiary Travel: $100 million above the President’s request to increase the beneficiary travel reimbursement rate from 28.5 cents per mile to 41.5 cents per mile.

Assistance for Homeless Vets:  $130 million for the homeless grants and per diem program, rejecting the President’s $8 million cut and the same as 2008, including $32 million to hire additional personnel for the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing Program.

New Generation Prosthetics: $1.6 billion, $250 million above 2008 and $116 million above the President’s request, to provide veterans with appropriate prosthetic support given recent advances in technology.

Medical Support and Compliance: $4.4 billion, $144 million above the President’s request and $338 million above 2008, to ensure the efficient operation of the Department’s health care system and to support plans to increase enrollment of Priority 8 veterans by 10 percent.

Increase Gas Mileage Reimbursement Rate: From 28.5 cents to 41 cents per mile for veterans traveling long distances for care.

Medical Facilities: $5 billion, $368 million above the President’s request and $769 million above 2008, including a $300 million increase for on-going maintenance and renovations of existing facilities to address identified shortfalls and to ensure the Department’s facilities remain capable of delivering world class medicine.  The Department currently estimates a maintenance backlog of over $5 billion. Includes $68 million to support plans to increase enrollment of Priority 8 veterans by 10 percent.

Medical and Prosthetic Research: $500 million, rejecting the President’s $38 million cut and $20 million above 2008, for research to help improve the quality of life for injured and aging veterans.  Restores the cuts to trauma and mental health research – important to veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

 Major and Minor Construction: $1.9 billion, rejecting the President’s $788 million cut and $215 million above 2008, to fulfill the Department’s commitment to fund recommendations made by the Capitol Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services (CARES), which was established to look at facilities and determine their construction needs.  The increase in minor construction will enable the Department to complete 145 projects in fiscal year 2009.

Extended Care Facilities: $165 million, rejecting the President’s $80 million cut and the same as 2008, for grants to States for construction and renovation of extended care facilities.  The funding level will meet identified life/safety needs and still provide funding for construction of additional new facilities.

General Operating Expenses:  $1.8 billion, $102 million above the President’s request and $197 million above 2008, to enable the Department to hire roughly 2,100 additional claims processors to work down the backlog of benefits claims and to reduce the time to process new claims.  The most recent VA quarterly status report estimates that nearly 396,000 claims are pending which is 20,000 more than their goal.

 Information Technology: $2.5 billion, $232 million above 2008 and $50 million above the President’s request, for an emergency fund to address critical unplanned needs at medical facilities.

Inspector General: $87.8 million, rejecting the President’s $4 million cut and $7.3 million above 2008, to provide additional personnel for oversight activities, including inspections of community based outpatient clinics and VA Centers.

Related Agencies

American Battle Monuments Commission:  $55.5 million, $11 million above 2008 and $8 million above the President’s request.  This funding provides for the care and operation of our military monuments and cemeteries around the world.

United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims: $73.98 million, $51 million above 2008 and $50 million above the President’s request, for the acquisition of a new facility for the Court.

Cemeterial Expenses: $31.2 million, matching 2008 and the President’s request, for Arlington cemetery.

Armed Forces Retirement Home: $63 million from the Trust Fund, the same as the President’s request, for operation and maintenance of the Armed Forces Retirement Home, including $8 million for capital expenditures at the DC campus.

 House Appropriations Committee

David R. Obey (WI-07), Chairman

House Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Construction & Veterans Affairs

Chet Edwards (TX-17), Chairman

Contact:           Josh Taylor,

June 11, 2008

WASHINGTON (American Forces Press Service) – Service members, veterans and their families going through problems related to deployments can get help from a California-based troop-support organization.

Members of the group, called Patriotic Hearts, have developed a plan to help families navigate the sometimes-unexpected issues they may face when a loved one returns from the front lines.

The plan involves working with spouses of deployed servicemembers to map out welcome-home parties, helping veterans find jobs, and hosting military marriage-enrichment weekends.

“This three-point plan also addresses the needs of the military children, who endure tremendous stresses,” Mark Baird, president of Patriotic Hearts, said.

Welcome home parties, the first part of the plan, play an important and vital role in helping military families start over again when a spouse returns from deployment, he said. Held in a large picnic area on or near military facilities, the parties provide a day of fun, music, food and laughter.

These events, while being especially beneficial for the children, help the whole family close the book on a stressful chapter in their lives, Baird said.

“It is our conviction that welcome-home parties are cathartic, and that they play an important first step in increasing psychological, emotional and marital well-being among our troops and their families,” he said. “The celebration completes the cycle.”

HirePatriots.com -- a free, online job posting and search board for troops, spouses and veterans -- works to help with the second phase of Patriotic Hearts’ plan. It was created in response to an injured Marine’s need for work after returning from deployment to find his family’s car had been repossessed.

In San Diego, where the program originated, more than 2,000 members of the military community find employment each month.

Keeping families together and lessening the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder are ancillary effects that HirePatriots.com creates, Baird said.

Financial stress is a big factor in many divorces, he noted.

“When added to the extraordinary stresses of the military and multiple combat deployments, the lack of enough money can be lethal [for marriages],” he said, adding that finding employment also can remove a stress factor that can contribute to PTSD.

The third way Patriotic Hearts has to help military families is its military marriage-enrichment weekends. The program provides all-expenses-paid, off-installation marriage retreats for current troops and recent veterans.

“The first to be invited are the wounded warriors from base hospitals,” Baird said. “But all troops and [recent] veterans are welcome to attend.”

This is the least servicemembers returning from deployment and their families deserve, he added.

Patriotic Hearts is a supporter of America Supports You, a Defense Department program connecting citizens and companies with servicemembers and their families serving at home and abroad.

As wars lengthen, toll on military families mounts
By DAVID CRARY
AP National Writer
Published: Saturday, July 19, 2008 11:58 PM CDT

EDITOR'S NOTE – With troops fighting on foreign soil since late 2001, the United States is learning about the long-term toll of modern war on the home front. In the first of a three-part package of stories, The Associated Press examines some of the consequences for military families.

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP)  – Far from the combat zones, the strains and separations of no-end-in-sight wars are taking an ever-growing toll on military families despite the armed services' earnest efforts to help.

Divorce lawyers see it in the breakup of youthful marriages as long, multiple deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan fuel alienation and mistrust. Domestic violence experts see it in the scuffles that often precede a soldier's departure or sour a briefly joyous homecoming.

Teresa Moss, a counselor at Fort Campbell's Lincoln Elementary School, hears it in the voices of deployed soldiers' children as they meet in groups to share accounts of nightmares, bedwetting and heartache.

"They listen to each other. They hear that they aren't the only ones not able to sleep, having their teachers yell at them," Moss said.

Even for Army spouses with solid marriages, the repeated separations are an ordeal.

"Three deployments in, I still have days when I want to hide under the bed and cry," said Jessica Leonard, who is raising two small children and teaching a "family team building" class to other wives at Fort Campbell. Her husband, Capt. Lance Leonard, is in Iraq.

Those classes are among numerous initiatives to support war-strained families. Yet military officials acknowledge that the vast needs outweigh available resources, and critics complain of persistent shortcomings – a dearth of updated data on domestic violence, short shrift for families of National Guard and Reserve members, inadequate support for spouses and children of wounded and traumatized soldiers.

If the burden sounds heavier than what families bore in the longest wars of the 20th century – World War II and Vietnam – that's because it is, at least in some ways. What makes today's wars distinctive is the deployment pattern – two, three, sometimes four overseas stints of 12 or 15 months. In the past, that kind of schedule was virtually unheard of.

"Its hard to go away, it's hard to come back, and go away and come back again," said Dr. David Benedek, a leading Army psychiatrist. "That is happening on a larger scale than in our previous military endeavors. They're just getting their feet wet with some sort of sense of normalcy, and then they have to go again."

Almost in one breath, military officials praise the resiliency that enables most families to endure and acknowledge candidly that the wars expose them to unprecedented stresses and the risk of long-lasting scars.

"There's nothing that has prepared many of our families for the length of these deployments," said Rene Robichaux, social work programs manager for the U.S. Army Medical Command. "It's hard to communicate to a family member how stressful the environment is, not just the risk of injury or death, but the austere circumstances, the climate, the living conditions."

An array of studies by the Army and outside researchers say that marital strains, risk of child maltreatment and other problems harmful to families worsen as soldiers serve multiple combat tours.

For example, a Pentagon-funded study last year concluded that children in some Army families were markedly more vulnerable to abuse and neglect by their mothers when their fathers were deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In Iraq, the latest survey by Army mental health experts showed that more than 15 percent of married soldiers deployed there were planning a divorce, with the rates for soldiers at the late stages of deployment triple those of recent arrivals.

For the Army, especially, the challenges are staggering as it furnishes the bulk of combat forces. As of last year, more than 55 percent of its soldiers were married, a far higher rate than during the Vietnam war. The nearly 513,000 soldiers on active duty collectively had more than 493,000 children.

Jessica Leonard at Fort Campbell says family support programs there have improved since her husband's first combat tour, helping her feel more self-reliant. Yet she's convinced that domestic violence and divorce are rising at the base, which is home to the 101st Airborne Division.

"Infidelity is huge on both sides – a wife is lonely, she looks for attention and finds it easier to cheat," she said. "It does make even the most sound marriages second-guess."

Among soldiers coming home, whether for two-week breaks that often end with wrenching good-byes or for longer stays, she sees evidence of lower morale and rising depression.

"They come home, and find that problems are still there," she said. "Instead of a refreshing R-and-R, a nice little second honeymoon, it's battle for two weeks."

There have been some horrific incidents shattering families of soldiers back from the wars – a former Army paratrooper from Michigan charged with raping and beating his infant daughter; a sergeant from Hawaii's Army National Guard accused of killing his 14-year-old son as the boy tried to save his pregnant mother from a knife attack by the soldier.

In one of the saddest cases, a recently divorced airman who served with distinction in Iraq chased his ex-wife out of military housing with a pistol in February before killing his two young children and himself at Oklahoma's Tinker Air Force Base. Tech. Sgt. Dustin Thorson's former wife had sought a protection order against him, saying he threatened to kill the children if she filed for divorce.

Officials at Tinker, while confirming that Thorson had been getting mental health care, would not say whether those problems related to his service in Iraq.

His brother, Shane Thorson, a sheriff's deputy from Pasco, Wash., who also served in Iraq, has no doubt Dustin's war experiences contributed to the tragedy.

"He didn't want to go – he was afraid, but he had a job that he'd signed up to do and he went and did it," Shane said. "I do think it led up to everything that happened. ... It opened up a world of death and chaos and uncertainty."

Shane, who is married and has an 8-year-old daughter, is sure the deployments have damaged many marriages.

"My wife and friends, they tell me I'm not the same person before I came back – not as loving," he said. "You really realize how insignificant you are in this world, and life moves on whether you're there or not."

Overall, the Army says its domestic violence rates are no worse than for civilian families. However, critics say there is a lack of comprehensive, updated data that reflects the impact of war-zone deployments and tracks cases involving veterans, reservists and National Guard members.

The Miles Foundation, which provides domestic-violence assistance to military wives, says its caseload has more than quadrupled during the Iraq and Afghan conflicts.

"The tactics learned as part of military training are often used by those who commit domestic violence," said the foundation's executive director, Christine Hansen, citing increased proficiency with weapons and psychological tactics such as sleep deprivation.

Jackie Campbell is a nursing professor at Johns Hopkins who served on a Defense Department task force examining domestic violence. She says the military's data on the problem is based only on officially reported incidents, and should be supplemented with confidential surveys such as some that were conducted before the Iraq war.

"They have no clue what the rate of domestic violence is – they only know what's reported to the system, and that's always lower than the actual rate," Campbell said. "I'm disappointed.... I know the system is stressed to the umpteenth degree. But I do think they need to do the right kind of research so they can keep up with this."

One complication, she said, is the high rate of post-traumatic stress disorder among service members returning from war. She said PTSD raises the risk of domestic violence, yet many soldiers and their spouses don't want to acknowledge PTSD or any domestic crises for fear of derailing the soldier's career.

"They know the power of the military will come down on them," Campbell said. "The women are often reluctant to have that happen."

At Fort Campbell, Family Advocacy Program director Louie Sumner – who's in charge of combatting domestic violence – has encouraged people to report suspected abuse, to the point where many allegations turn out to be unsubstantiated.

But Sumner said his program, though considered one of the Army's best, should do more outreach with the majority of families who live off the huge base, in subdivisions, apartments and trailer parks where many couples' troubles may go undetected.

Sumner is sure that the repeated deployments heighten the risk of family violence. "When the soldier goes overseas three, four times, the fuse is a lot shorter," he said. "They explode quicker, and the victim gets hurt worse."

He marveled that some of the hasty marriages by youthful soldiers survive the rigors of deployment.

"My wife and I have been married 38 years," he said. "I'm not sure we could have stood being apart 30 of the next 42 months at the start of our marriage. That's a long time when you're real young."

The independence that wives develop at home alone leads to friction when a returning husband seeks to restore the old order in household decision-making.

"Somebody who's violent and controlling of his partner before he leaves will spend a lot of time while he's away wondering what she's doing, worrying that he doesn't have that day-to-day control," said Debbie Tucker, who co-chaired the Pentagon's domestic violence task force. "He comes back with the attitude that it needs to be re-established as firmly as possible."

Despite the stresses, a study published in April by Rand Corp. concluded that divorce rate among military families between 2001 and 2005 was no higher than during peacetime a decade earlier. But the study doesn't reflect the third and fourth war zone deployments that have strained many military marriages over the past three years.

Maj. Mike Oeschger gets a closer look at struggling marriages than he'd like in his role as rear detachment commander for the 1st Brigade Combat Team at Fort Campbell. Dealing with family crises while the brigade is in Iraq is a critical part of his job.

"The biggest problems usually revolve around money – the husband may not have given the wife access to funds," he said.

Oeschger, a husband and father who served in Iraq himself, has seen infidelity in multiple forms. Some wives at the base are preyed on by men who know the husbands are overseas; some war-zone soldiers pursue extramarital affairs over the Internet.

"Often the guy comes back, tells his wife, 'I'm not interested in you any more. I think we're done,'" Oeschger said.

He'd rather stay out of his soldiers' personal lives, but that's not always an option.

"There's almost nothing that's private in the Army," he said. "Once it starts to affect performance, I'm involved and want to know every detail. It's miserable stuff ... but it's my job."

Col. Ronald Crews, one of several chaplains called from the reserves to help with family counseling, said long-distance marital crises became so severe for two Fort Campbell soldiers recently that they were sent home from Iraq to handle them.

"Their commander said they wouldn't be of any use until the problems were resolved," Crews said. The soldiers were required to meet with him weekly. One returned to Iraq and the other did not.

For some time, chaplains have been conducting marriage workshops for soldiers back from deployment. Now, says Crews, married soldiers also are being required to attend such workshops before they leave.

"Deployments don't help in strengthening a marriage, but they do not have to kill marriages," Crews said. "That's a choice a couple has to make."

Medical personnel, meanwhile, have been directed to be more aggressive in screening spouses of deployed soldiers for depression. More than 1,000 "family readiness support assistants" are being added, as are dozens of marriage and family therapists. A respite child care program is expanding to provide more relief to stressed mothers.

However, for families living off-base, there are often far fewer support programs readily available.

Advocacy groups also say more must be done for families of wounded and traumatized soldiers who leave the service. At a recent congressional hearing, Barbara Cohoon of the National Military Families Association suggested the Veterans Administration is not meeting these needs, and said the anguish of wounded soldiers' children "is often overlooked and underestimated."

Stacy Bannerman, an anti-war activist whose husband served with the Washington State National Guard in Iraq, says many Guard members and reservists don't get adequate treatment when – like her husband – they are diagnosed with PTSD.

"The families are scattered everywhere, and we don't have the support networks that active duty does," Bannerman said. "There's very little attention paid to reintegration – bammo, you suddenly go back to your civilian life. I haven't spoken to anyone who hasn't experienced some degree of stress on a marriage."

Her own marriage nearly became one of the casualties. She and her husband, Lorin, were separated for more than a year, but now – after finding a counselor outside the military – are working at reconciliation even as Lorin faces a second deployment to Iraq in August.

"It's been a long, arduous process," said Bannerman, who has moved to Oregon to work at an animal sanctuary which is seeking to involve traumatized veterans in its programs.

Many returning soldiers experience some form of depression, lapsing into substance abuse, sleeping fitfully, withdrawing from family activities. Children may feel their father is too distant, or unsettlingly changed.

"The kids may not really recognize their parent," said Col. Elspeth Ritchie, psychiatry consultant to the Army surgeon general. "Their expectations build up, and then expectations aren't met."

The Army would like to beef up psychiatric care for children, Ritchie said, but is hampered by a national shortage of child psychiatrists.

"The children of these families are suffering damage emotionally and a lot of them aren't getting any help," said Lee Rosen, whose North Carolina law firm handles many military divorces. "We're going to have fallout from this for a long time."

Rosen says the breaking point for many couples often arrives with a second or third deployment.

"To go off for one deployment for a year is difficult, but when that soldier comes back, people are able to adjust, to heal," he said. "When you go a second time, and are threatened with the possibility of a third, it's just devastating."

Yet many marriages don't survive even a first deployment.

While 1st Lt. Mike Robison was serving in Iraq in 2003-04, his wife, Candance, depicted him as a "good, brave man" in a letter she wrote to President Bush. But the marriage fell apart after Robison's return home to Texas. Candance said they argued over her role managing the household and how he treated her 10-year daughter from a previous relationship.

"It absolutely changed him," Candance said of his deployment. "I still struggle every day — that year has affected every single aspect of my life."

Andrew Brown, an Army Reserve sergeant from Pennsylvania, says his marriage failed to survive the effects of his Iraq deployment in 2004-05. Returning home, he was diagnosed with PTSD and deduced that his wife, lonely in his absence, had been having an affair.

"With the mental state I was in, I was relying on her to provide support, and she wasn't ready to do that," Brown said.

"What I went through is not an isolated incident," he added. "Guys came back – they'd shut down, turn to the bottle, have lots of fights with their spouses."

At their small ranch house near Fort Campbell, Staff Sgt. Brian Powell and his wife, Krystal, expressed determination to keep their marriage on track as they raise two young sons and as Brian faces a second deployment Рthis time to Afghanistan — starting in December.

Brian was in Iraq when his eldest son, Jamison, was born in 2006. He got home on a brief leave three days after the birth.

"It was just two weeks," Brian said. "You don't want to get attached because you know you have to go back."

"It's a really hard transition, coming back from blood, death, corruption to a wife and baby. You feel you don't know each other," Krystal added. "But if you have faith, you get through it."

On the Net:

Army family-support programs: http://www.behavioralhealth.army.mil/

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

This is not directed at any one person. It's just my thoughts of what I see wrong with our country!  

Before I even start to write anything, please know I am NOT another Cindy Sheehan.  I am a military mom who supports my son, our troops, and my president. I love my country!  I'm a proud American!

I'm angry at you, the American citizen.  Those who choose to turn your head and do nothing.  Those who say "I support our Troops, but not this War!"  Please tell me how that is possible when the troops are the ones fighting this war?  And by the way, how do you actually support our troops?  Just saying the words do not count.

I'm angry at our government for not having proper mental health care programs in place to help our returning troops who are dealing with tremendous issues.  It breaks my heart that young men and women are coming home and they feel like no one cares.  I just received word that a young Louisiana man tried to commit suicide.  He had asked for help, but received none.  He felt no one cared.  This should not be happening.  This is America for God Sake!  We save the whales, the birds, hell everything, but we can't save or help those who fight for our freedom?

I'm angry that people are allowed to protest at soldiers funerals and their families are subjected to such hatred after they gave everything for this country.  I don't care if it's their first amendment.  It is not right and WE should not let it happen.

I'm angry that a young husband/father goes off to war and it puts his family in poverty.  This doesn't make you angry, but our state legislation giving themselves a raise does?  A lot of our military families are on public assistance.  Yet, we'll pay athletes millions of dollars to play sports.  What's wrong with this picture?  Our military should be one of the highest paid professions ever.

I'm angry that we host a luncheon once a year for parents who have lost their children and only 1% of our elected officials donate to help cover the cost.  The percentage is even less for big businesses in our area.

I'm angry that I sent out a request to numerous businesses and day spas in Baton Rouge and asked them to help me host a "wives day out" for 10...yes 10 wives.  You're probably asking what makes these wives so special.  Well, most of them have watched their husband go off to war, not once, twice, but three times.  Don't you think they deserve to be treated to one special day of pampering?  Not one spa responded and only one restaurant responded saying they don't serve lunch at the time requested.  How about doing something special for someone who has given up so much so you can do business freely in this country?

I'm angry when a soldier is killed and the streets are not lined with people showing the family they mourn with them for their loss. 

I'm angry because there is such a thing as a "homeless veteran" in our country.  How can we allow this when these people volunteered to protect our rights and freedoms?  We help every other country and give illegal immigrants more assistance than people who fought for us.  This simply is not right. 

I'm angry that the media doesn't report the whole story.  That they are so bias they can't report the good things our troops are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.  How about telling both sides of the story?  Maybe more people would support our troops then.

I'm angry that a young military widow moved her children from Washington state to Arizona after her husband's death and she is not allowed to receive state benefits because they were not residents of that state prior to his death.  She's not asking for much...education benefits so she can continue her education and give her two children a better life and a license plate.  Is that asking for too much?  After all, her husband didn't die for just Louisiana, Washington, or Arizona.  He died for the United States of America and she should be allowed to move anywhere she pleases and be treated fairly and receive whatever benefits are available.

I'm angry that I am a military mom and I feel this way and I have to write these things about my fellow American citizens.  Wake up America!  Show your support.  Hang your America flags outside your homes, adopt a soldier from www.anysoldier.com who doesn't receive care packages from home, let a military family know you support them.  Tie a yellow ribbon around your tree or mailbox.  Thank a veteran!  Do something nice for the young wife and her children left behind. 

If you don't have a someone serving in the military, you can't even begin to imagine what's it's like.  Every minute of every day is spent worrying about them and their safety.  You wonder if every car turning in your driveway is coming to tell you the unthinkable.  You wonder if the phone call from an unrecognizable number is calling to tell you your child has been hurt.  You wake up at night, that's if you can sleep, and start to pray just because.  You check your email at all times of the day and night hoping for a quick note from your child and just for that minute you know they are okay. 

The American Flag, National Anthem, and TAPS take on a whole new meaning once your child has served in the military...especially during a war.  You now know what it means to truly give all for your country. 

I'm not saying no one supports our troops.  There are a small percentage of people who truly care and to those I say THANK YOU.  I am so grateful for your support and I truly appreciate everything you have done in supporting our troops and our families.  You all know who you are and you know in your heart if you have done all you can to support our military.

I'm embarrassed that our country treated our Vietnam Veterans so badly.  I wish I could take away their pain.  I believe if we are not careful we will have another generation of veterans who are treated the same way.  We cannot let this happen again.  Please, please show your support, please do more to show you care.  Please reach out to our troops and get behind them.  I realize money is tight for everyone, but that's not all that is needed.  Flying your flag outside your home cost nothing.  Putting a sign of support in your window cost nothing.  Attending public events honoring our veterans cost nothing.  Remembering our troops in your prayers cost nothing, but means so much!

Thank you for taking the time to read this and please pass along to others who might need a reminder that we are at war and young men and women are dying every day. 

May God Bless our Troops and May He Bless America!

Janet Broussard

Proud Military Mom