Remarks Of Senator Patrick Leahy
On The White House Plan To Dip Into USDA,
Student Loan And Food Stamp Accounts
To Pay For VA Data Breach Credit Monitoring
News Conference, U.S. Capitol
Wednesday, June 28, 2006

If you trust your money to a bank, you get compounded interest.  Unfortunately these days, veterans are finding that if you trust your health care or your personal information to the Bush-Cheney Administration, you get compounded incompetence.

Last year Secretary Nicholson repeatedly and vigorously denied a billion-dollar shortfall for veterans health care, while Senator Murray and others were trying to blow the whistle and fix the problem.  Then he discovered she was right.

In the aftermath of the disclosure of the VA data breach I called on Secretary Nicholson to offer free credit checks for the millions of veterans and soldiers whose data was lost and whose lives could be turned upside down by his department’s incompetence.

Weeks later, he agreed to do that.  But he wanted to take the funds from veterans’ health programs.  And now today, trying to recover once again from this pattern of incompetence, the White House announces that, instead, they want to send the bill to farmers, students and Americans struggling to get by on Food Stamps. 

It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that I should have qualified my message to Secretary Nicholson and the White House by adding:  By the way, don’t punish students, farmers and those needing Food Stamps for your mistakes.

We spend at least $200 million a day in Iraq.  Just days ago Congress gave President Bush the tens of billions of additional dollars he asked for in emergency appropriations to rebuild Iraq.  The Bush-Cheney Administration has no qualms about twisting arms for funding for Iraq.  But when it comes to needs here at home felt by veterans and other ordinary Americans, their solution is to steal from Peter to pay Paul.

They have fought the efforts by Senator Murray and Senator Byrd and Senator Salazar and others to provide the resources needed for credit monitoring, without taking from other national needs.  They are wrong.  And it adds up to a heckuva bad job for veterans and for ordinary Americans everywhere.

# # # # #