Veterans concerned about benefits

SANDY — Veterans concerned about possible reductions in their benefits and health care peppered VA Secretary James Nicholson and Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, with questions Monday.

Many of the veterans were in town for the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention. Nicholson will speak this morning as part of his duties as the Secretary for Veterans Affairs.

But at the informal session Monday, the former soldiers passed around microphones for probing questions about bureaucratic red tape, funding for future budgets and disparities between active duty and reservist benefits.

Armed forces soldiers receive a long list of benefits and perks during and after active duty that often surpass those of the reservists and National Guard soldiers. The armed forces — Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard — are usually full-time employees of the government who generally have shorter tours of duty in combat zones.

Yet, as a uniformed soldier asked, to great applause: Why have National Guard soldiers and reservists been fighting in Iraq in previously unseen numbers without corresponding increases in their pay and perks?

"You have an old system. We've evolved; we have a new environment, and we have to resolve it," said Cannon, a Republican who represents Utah's 3rd Congressional District. "We're using it and abusing it in a way that people hadn't really anticipated."

Nicholson, who served both in the Army and the Army Reserve, said that because reservists and National Guard soldiers are bearing much of the burden of fighting the Iraq war, it is time to look at their benefits again.

"We are using the reserve force unlike maybe we ever have," Nicholson said. "Some of these things probably have to be revisited."

Via a moderator who handled written questions, a veteran asked why Veterans Affairs is examining benefits to more than 72,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. The benefits had been awarded, Nicholson then explained, before states coordinated the award amounts for the disorder. The lack of accounting would have cost approximately $19.8 billion, Nicholson said, and so Congress asked him to look twice at the cases.

That second look also is necessary because the VA wants to know how to handle disorder cases in the future, and there will likely be many soldiers returning from Iraq who have the disorder, he said.