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Below is 8th congressional district Moderate Party candidate Bill Scheurer's press release entitled,

Scheurer blasts Congress' failure to support troops

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE - August 30, 2006

Scheurer blasts Congress' failure to support troops

When Congress slashed funding for the research and treatment of brain injuries caused by bomb blasts, Bill Scheurer took it personally.

Scheurer, running as the independent Moderate Party candidate for Congress in the IL-8th district, has first hand knowledge of the implications of this budget cut.

“My older son suffered a stroke when he was 15,” Scheurer said. “It’s had a huge impact on his life, and on our family.”

As if that’s not enough, Scheurer’s younger son recently returned from a year-long tour of duty in Iraq, where troops are subjected to the kind of bomb blasts that are believed to cause permanent damage.

“We don’t know how he was affected, because there is no screening,” Scheurer said. “That is part of the problem.”

And there is not likely to be any screening.

Both House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill provide only $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC). Last year’s budget gave the center $14 million.

In 2001, the budget for research and treatment was $6.5 million, and it has increased incrementally every year of the war.

This year, the DBVIC requested an increase to $19 million, as more and more soldiers return, suffering from multiple concussions. Scientists believe that such repeated concussions can cause permanent brain damage.

George Zitnay, co-founder of the center, told a Senate subcommittee, “Traumatic brain injury is the signature injury of the war on terrorism.”

The absence of screening for brain injury is part of a “Catch 22” scenario: much of the research depends on screening returning veterans, but the Pentagon refuses to allow the screening because it claims more research is needed. Without adequate funding, there is neither screening nor research.

This was not the only cut in spending for veterans’ health care benefits.

The budget cuts $910 million from the Veterans Administration already hard-pressed to adequately care for ill and injured veterans.

In a commentary on Aug, 24 by William Pitt of truthout.org, he noted, “Nearly 20,000 veterans have been wounded in Iraq, but must wait nearly six months before being seen by a V.A. hospital.”

He also cited doubled co-pays for veteran health care in Bush’s 2005 budget, and Bush’s opposition to allowing National Guard and Reservists access to the Pentagon health care program.

Members of appropriations committees in both houses blamed a tight budget for the cuts in the 2007 budget.

Questioning congressional priorities, Scheurer asked, “Why did Melissa Bean vote to give a tax break to Paris Hilton, but not speak out for real support for our returning veterans?”

Scheurer also questions the morality of spending billions of dollars on the war, claiming to “support the troops” while treating them as expendable.

“Is it support to send them out repeatedly, for extended tours of duty, to risk injury, disfigurement, disabilities and death--but not to help them heal when they return?” He said. “How can we support their deaths, but not their lives?”

Rep. Bean’s name is not among those of the 92 members of the Congressional Brain Injury Task Force, which authored a letter endorsing the DBVIC’s budget request, although Bean’s staff claims she supports brain injury research and treatment for veterans.

“This is just another case of Bean’s empty rhetoric about ‘supporting the troops’ while ignoring their needs as real human beings,” Scheurer said.

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