Oscar Mike Radio - 514 - Jim Whaley - Mission Roll Call

Well, one thing that, you know, is on the forefront of a lot of veterans' minds, including my own, is the Take Care of America's Veteran Act that's going on right now.

And I don't know everything about it.

I'll be in with you, but I'm also like looking at it and I'm like, why are we trying to do this this way now? I mean, a lot of us were happy with the way things were going.

A lot of us looked at this and said, you know, if you were collecting retirement benefits and got hurt and you're getting a VA rating, What does it matter that you're, in a sense, double dipping? I mean, to me, you've earned that one way or the other.

And it just seems like that in some cases recently, the voices aren't being heard.

Decisions are trying to be made and forced through without really telling the veteran what's going to happen.

And it's very troubling in that regard.

Yeah, it's a very complex issue, right? The Take Care of American Veterans Act really for simple terms, bundles about 61 major bills to do that.

So it's very complex.

It's the Richard Starr Act.

It's a number of different bills.

I can't go through every 61.

I can't remember all 61 because it's so complex, but it affects every walk of veterans, either family, family members, the veterans themselves, severely disabled, all of that.

So it's complex in that regard.

And I think the move was, now's the time we can put this together.

People have waited for years and years and years.

Spouses out of their pocket, taking care of their loved ones.

Really horrible situations where when you read about it or you talk to the family members, you're absolutely incensed by it.

But I think the challenge was the way the funding piece worked out.

No one's really happy about both sides aren't happy about it.

You know, so you have on one side, you know, the VFW and the DAV that are really against it.

IAVA is strongly against it.

And then you have a consortium of other organizations that are pushing and see the benefits of it.

I think all of them agree that we would rather have it not one thing reduced in order to pay for things here and all that.

So that's the crust of the matter.