Weiner Fights Back On Vets Benefits

, D-Forest Hills, held a press conference at the American Legion Hall on Metropolitan Avenue Friday to try and send a message to some of the deficit hawks in Washington. That message? Don't increase fees on veterans to obtain Veterans' Administration medical care.

The fee increase for attaining ' services was one of many recommendations made by a federal deficit commission, which recently handed down a plan for halting some of the perceived runaway spending in the nation's capital.

For Weiner, however, spending on veterans' services isn't something government should be looking to curb.

"Some of the things that they've proposed not only are not good ideas for reducing the deficit, but frankly are going to continue a trend that already needs to be reversed," Weiner said.  "For many veterans, they've already been asked to give an enormous amount. Slowly but surely, the commitment that was made to veterans when they joined the service has been eroded and eroded and eroded."

The deficit commission proposed that veterans earning under $30,000 annually, Weiner said, would have to pay $50 and $90 fees for things like outpatient care at Veterans' Administration facilities.

Weiner said that any savings that would be created by increasing fees to veterans now would be eaten up by higher costs of more serious veteran care down the road.

"They say it will save us $700 million dollars over ten years," he said. "But I think all of us are smart enough to realize that if veterans don't get some of these services, they're just going to pay higher costs later on."

Many Queens veterans gathered with Weiner to decry the proposed fees and cutbacks in spending for veterans' health care, saying that the government has already cannibalized much of the care that was promised to them over the course of many conflicts in the 20th Century.

"Any cut at all concerning an American veteran is ludicrous," said Thomas Winberry, a past commander of the American Legion troop in Queens. "This is a constant discussion that we always have. A country will be judged on how they treat their veterans."

Winberry said that members of the local group were grateful for Weiner's intercession on the matter, and that they were "hopeful he'll be successful" in his attempt to block the fee increases.