MINORITY VIEW OF THE HONORABLE DENNY SMITH OF OREGON The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is charged with the weighty responsibility of ensuring that our nation's veterans, their dependents, and survivors are adequately compensated for service to their country. This is especially true for those veterans who suffered hardship, injury and death, as a result of time spent in the armed services. Ås a member of the committee which must take a strong leadership role in paying the nation's debt to its veterans, I must reluctantly oppose the fiscal year 1983 budget proposal developed by this Committee. Neither could I support the Reagan administration's budget proposal. Both reflect an increase in spending at a time when we are faced with skyrocketing Federal deficits. The budget proposal for fiscal year 1982 authorized spending on veterans' programs at the level of $25.6 billion. This year, we are adding $866 million to the authority level of these programs. I truly believe we could have met our obligations to veterans and still hold the line on spending to last year's level. We could have accomplished this goal by continuing last year's authority level, without reordering our program priorities. I suspect there will be many unhappy veterans when they realize there are basic benefit changes contained in the Committee's budget proposal. There will also be many unhappy taxpayers when they realize that the budget has been increased while the benefits for many veterans have decreased. We could have avoided this problem had we put a freeze on spending at last year's level, and postponed a change in program direction until our economic house was in order. This Committee's report to the Budget Committee reflects, clearly, what every other committee will attempt to do. The Congress will continue to squabble over which programs to increase or decrease, while we spend more dollars in the long run. Our nation is on the brink of economic disaster, and this committee contributes to the problem when it continues to request ever-increasing budget authority. Can we meet the needs of our veterans with the same amount of money this year as last? Of course, and we don't need to change course in mid-stream to do it. DENNY SMITH. |