Issue Position: Honoring Our Veterans

Issue Position

The daughter of a WWII U.S. Navy veteran, wife of a U.S. Army veteran, and member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congresswoman Shelley Berkley has made veterans issues a top priority in Congress. Las Vegas is currently home to approximately 200,000 veterans, and continues to attract veterans in greater numbers than any other region of the country. This large and growing population means that southern Nevada's veterans have had to endure insufficient levels of service and long waits to receive care.

A member of the Veterans' Subcommittee on Health, Berkley has led the fight to bring an inpatient clinic, hospital and long-term care facility to southern Nevada to replace the condemned Del Guy clinic. In May, VA Secretary Principi traveled to Las Vegas where he and Rep. Berkley announced that the VA will indeed build this full-scale medical complex that southern Nevada's veterans deserve.

In addition, Berkley secured a permanent mammography unit for southern Nevada's women veterans and is fighting to lower wait times for medical services, boost funding for successful VA programs, and shift resources from areas of declining population to growth areas like Las Vegas. Berkley is strongly opposed to the Disabled Veterans Tax, and has cosponsored major legislation to end the Survivor Benefits Penalty, improve homeless veterans programs, as well as small business and educational opportunities for all veterans.

Congresswoman Berkley is committed to:

Improving health care for southern Nevada's veterans

+ Secured a new full-service medical complex, including an inpatient clinic, hospital and long-term care facility.

+ Secured installment of a permanent mammography unit for the VA Ambulatory Care Center.

* Worked to cut wait times for medical services care.

+ Cosponsored "The Assured Funding for Veterans Health Care Act," which would guarantee funding for veterans' health care and would improve veterans' access to health care and funding for special VA programs such as post-traumatic stress disorder treatment, blind rehabilitation, spinal cord injury centers, homelessness, and long-term care.

Improving benefits for veterans and their families

+ Sponsored the "Veterans Burial Benefits Improvement Act," which would increase veterans' burial benefits in order to cover the same percentage of veterans' burial costs that the benefit covered when they were first initiated in 1973. Unfortunately, the veterans' burial benefits provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs for funeral costs have eroded and states and families are left to supplement the costs.

+ Cosponsored legislation to end the Disabled Veterans' Tax, which forces disabled military retirees to give up one dollar of their pension for every dollar of disability pay they receive.

+ Cosponsored the Military Survivor Benefits Improvement Act of 2003 to end the Survivor Benefit Penalty, which unfairly penalizes aging survivors--mostly widows--of our veterans. This legislation would increase the minimum survivor benefit and restore to 55 percent from 35 percent the basic annuity for surviving spouses age 62 and over.

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