Issue Position: Veterans

Issue Position

Issue Position: Veterans

Congressman Murtha was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974, the first Vietnam combat Veteran elected to Congress. In those days, most members of Congress were veterans, usually from World War II and/or the Korean War. Today, less than twenty five percent of the members of Congress are military veterans. This is why it's so important for veterans to continue to communicate with their representatives to emphasize the needs and promises made to America's military veterans and to their families.

Today we have over 23 million veterans in America. Congressman Murtha continues to fight to ensure that our veterans and their families receive both the benefits and care they have earned and rightfully deserve.

The Veterans Health Administration alone estimates that they will treat more than 5.8 million patients in 2008, including more than 263,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

For fiscal year 2008, Congress provided the single largest funding increase in the history of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), an additional $3.7 billion over the President's request. Congress provided $4.1 billion for renovations and maintenance to existing VA medical facilities, $480 million for prosthetic research that will improve the quality of life for injured and aging veterans, $130 million to help care for homeless veterans, and $124 million to hire roughly 1,800 additional claims processors to work-down the backlog of benefits claims and to reduce the time to process new claims.

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