Burgess Owens: “we have heard a lot of statistics which show how grave the problem is. Last fall, I had a town meeting of veterans in my…”

“we have heard a lot of statistics which show how grave the problem is. Last fall, I had a town meeting of veterans in my district, and those were some of the angriest people I have ever seen. These are members of our society who have been betrayed, and who are continuously betrayed. Those who are fortunate enough to come back, there are 58,000 who died in Vietnam, 300,000 were wounded, and some of the wounded were in that audience, and on and on it goes with the insults they have to endure, like the long waiting lists. It is important for us to note that those of us who are against war are not against soldiers or veterans. Anybody who places his life at risk, whether as a volunteer or drafted, deserves to have the medal of greatness placed upon them. Out of the nearly 300 million people in our population, those few people become great people. There is no such thing as a greatest generation just because they fought World War II. All veterans, Vietnam, Korea, whoever was able to come back, deserves the maximum that we can do in terms of housing, education and certainly medical benefits. It is a commentary, which I think has been pointed to several times here, on the heartlessness of this administration that at a time like this they would dare have a $28 billion cut in the benefits for veterans over a 10-year period. Veterans deserve all we can give them. They are all part of a great generation no matter which war they have fought in.”