By DAVID EGGERT – 21 hours ago
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The wail of bagpipes at Memorial Day events honoring servicemen killed in Iraq and Afghanistan rang hollow for some military veterans this year.
In Michigan and elsewhere, once-sacrosanct veterans' programs are no longer safe from the knife as tax revenues continue sliding in the recession.
In a recent budget-cutting order, Gov. Jennifer Granholm and legislators slashed $1 million, or 25 percent, of funding for 11 groups that help veterans through a maze of paperwork and bureaucracy to get disability and pension benefits from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The cut is forcing layoffs and likely will be carried over to the next budget, too.
'It's a travesty,' said Daniel Crocker, Michigan service director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which had to eliminate four jobs. 'The greatness of a nation will be judged by how it treats its veterans.'
South Carolina plans to cut aid to the VFW, American Legion and Disabled American Veterans in the next budget. Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn recently outlined a 'doomsday' budget that would close all four of the state's veterans' home if an income tax increase is not passed, leaving more than 1,000 veterans without care.
Thirteen veterans' groups in Ohio got 10 percent less than promised this year after state cuts.
Funding for veterans' service organizations, or VSOs, is a fraction of multibillion-dollar state budgets that support schools, prisons and health care for the poor. But a $27,000 reduction means the South Carolina VFW will not be able to pay its lone service officer when she returns from medical leave." Read more ...
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