Is the Va Completing Its Mission?

Is the VA completing its Mission?

The Veterans Administration is operating on a shoe string and is failing in its responsibility to provide patient care and federal benefits to veterans. When there is a back log of 900,000 veterans waiting to get their benefit claims into the VA. Along with substandard condition in military medical center that have young men and women coming home with multiple disabilities and are not getting the help they need. How can we sit by as a grateful nation and let this happen to the people who provide the very freedom we enjoy because of their sacrifice for the United States? How did we get to this point let’s start with a brief history of the VA. With the name changing over the years, and having many directors, administrators and other top officials. The mission of the Department of Veterans Affairs remains the same-“Caring for Americans veterans.”(Brief history of VA) This benefits system traces its roots back to 1636, when the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony were at war with the Pequot Indians. The Pilgrims passed a law which stated that disabled soldiers would be supported by the colony. The mission of caring for veterans traces it roots to benefits administered by the first U.S. Congress in 1789. It read

“If any man shall be sent forth as a soldier and shall return maimed, he shall be maintained competently by the colon during his life.”(Brief History of VA) With laws like these the Continental Congress was able to encourage enlistments during the Revolutionary War by providing these benefits. In the early days of the Republic the benefits were provide by the states and communities. Then in 1811 the first care facility was authorized by the government. In 1818 the secretary of war assumed the administering responsibility of the veterans programs thru out the rest of the 1800 the programs continued to grow adding service for veterans and their families. Congress established a new system of veterans benefits once...