Bob Filner: “I defy any of you to go before any town meeting in this Nation and tell our veterans that this budget makes up for the…”

“I defy any of you to go before any town meeting in this Nation and tell our veterans that this budget makes up for the contract that we made with them. We are not, my colleagues, fulfilling our contract with our veterans. We have asked them to sacrifice during war. We asked them to sacrifice in this budget process when we had deficits, and now we continue to ask them to sacrifice when we have surpluses. That is not right. This is not a good bill for our veterans. We are falling further and further behind each year that we have a surplus, and we do not make up for past injustices to our veterans. This budget does represent the strongest request the administration has ever made; but serious deficiencies are in this budget. Whether we look at research, whether we look at our State homes, and whether we look at Montgomery GI bill benefits, we simply have not fulfilled our contract where our Nation's veterans. Yes, we have fulfilled the administration's request, but if we consider inflation and salary increases, we have fallen behind another 10 percent in this vital account.”