
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, February 12, 1991                   TAG: 9102120172
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

VETERANS ADVOCATES BLAST BUDGET

When George Bush was vice president, he advised President Ronald Reagan to make Veterans Administration a Cabinet-level department. Last week, for the second year in a row, President Bush put the taxpayers' money where his mouth was.

The Department of Veterans Affairs won its second annual increase of nearly $1 billion from the Bush White House. Most of the added funds will go toward operating the VA's 172 hospitals, the nation's largest hospital system.

Veterans advocates said the record $33.2 billion budget is not enough and charged it contains one major flaw.

The budget fails to account for the higher costs the VA is certain to encounter as a result of Operation Desert Storm. If the Defense Department uses the veterans hospitals to care for casualties of the Persian Gulf war, officials conceded that the VA's expenses are likely to soar.

"Not only is the quality of VA health care and services for current veterans questionable under this budget, but also the care and services for future veterans," said Joseph E. Andry, national commander of the Disabled American Veterans.

VA officials counter "there is no way to predict the volume" of casualties from the conflict and point out that the administration will seek a supplemental appropriation later in the year to cover the war.

Many of the VA's added costs will be charged to the Pentagon, said Dennis R. Boxx, a department spokesman. But he acknowledged the VA is certain to run up expenses once the most severely injured are discharged from the military and made wards of the VA.

The VA also is likely to face added costs from the expedited claims handling and burial benefits VA Secretary Edward J. Derwinski has promised Desert Storm personnel. If needed, he has said the VA will add staff on weekends and holidays at its 113 cemeteries for burials of service personnel killed in the conflict.

Veterans groups point out the department's budget calls for adding only 33 new workers to run the VA's huge array of benefits and trimming 37 workers from the force of 1,237 at its cemeteries.

The House Veterans Affairs Committee, which will open hearings on the budget Feb. 20, sought to play down the significance of the added funds, quoting VA officials as conceding that "the increase will, at best, hold the line at [fiscal] '91 medical spending levels."

John Hanson, an American Legion official, said his group is wary of one major change that the VA says would initially save $15 million a year, but would ultimately cost $400 million more.

Under the change, the survivors of generals and other officers would no longer be assured higher death benefits than the survivors of Army privates and other enlisted personnel who die on active duty or as a result of an illness contracted in the military.

by CNB