Proposed budget cuts will hurt veterans...

The Morning Call reports on the Bush administration funding cuts for the VA. There are other reports of delays and toughening of disability standards.

The long waits are already having a significant impact on veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. An estimated 166,000 veterans of these two wars have left the services, and over 26,000 of these veterans, 16 percent, have applied for disability benefits. More than one in three, 9,750 veterans, are on waiting lists and have yet to receive assessments.

These problems could become even worse. The president's budget for fiscal 2005, which began on Oct. 1, called for cutting more than 500 positions from the Veterans Benefits Administration, the VA office that handles disability assessments. While Congress has yet to finalize this budget, the proposal would still leave VA well short of meeting the needs of veterans. On Sept. 20, leaders of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and AMVETS wrote that the budget ''will have a devastating impact.''