THE WASHINGTON UNION PAPERS: NO. 37

REFORMING THE VA & RESTORING DIGNITY TO AMERICAN VETERANS

To the People of the United States,

There is no greater shame upon this nation than the way it has treated its veterans. No betrayal is more unforgivable than sending men and women into battle, demanding their sacrifice, and then discarding them like broken tools when they return. A government that swears to support its warriors but leaves them to rot in bureaucratic purgatory is a government unworthy of their service. A nation that drapes itself in patriotism on the Fourth of July, but lets its heroes sleep on the streets, is a nation drowning in hypocrisy. The sins of the Department of Veterans Affairs are not mere administrative failures; they are moral failures, ethical disgraces, and acts of betrayal that will stain the pages of history. No more. The Washington Union Party will not stand by as those who fought for this Republic are abandoned by the very government they defended. It is time to burn the system of neglect to the ground and build one worthy of the blood that has been shed for this nation.

For decades, the VA has been a monument to government dysfunction, a fortress of red tape where veterans go to die waiting. It is a cathedral of incompetence, a towering bureaucracy so bloated and unaccountable that its very existence is an insult to the men and women it was built to serve. The failures of the VA are not a secret. They are not hidden in the shadows, nor are they mere statistical aberrations. They are well-documented, widely known, and yet tolerated by those in power who have neither the will nor the spine to dismantle the corruption that has festered within its walls. Promises of reform have been made and broken so many times that they have lost all meaning, becoming as empty as the chairs at VA hospitals where veterans die waiting for appointments that never come.

Scandals have been exposed, investigations launched, hearings held, and yet nothing changes. In 2014, the Phoenix VA scandal erupted, revealing that veterans were dying while languishing on secret waitlists, manipulated to hide the true extent of delays in care. Dozens of veterans perished while bureaucrats falsified records to protect their bonuses and pensions. The outcry was fierce, the outrage palpable, and yet, despite resignations and firings, the system remained unchanged. Nearly a decade later, a 2023 report found that veterans are still waiting months for basic medical care, that the backlog of disability claims continues to swell, and that VA hospitals remain plagued by inefficiency, malpractice, and systemic neglect.

The list of atrocities stretches across administrations, across decades, across generations. In 1972, the government tested drugs on veterans at the Edgewood Arsenal. In the 1980s and 1990s, veterans exposed to Agent Orange were dismissed, ignored, told that their suffering was imaginary while the government buried evidence of their poisoning. In the early 2000s, Walter Reed Army Medical Center became a symbol of national disgrace, its halls filled with mold, its wounded warriors neglected in conditions unfit for animals, let alone heroes. Time and again, the promise is made: Never again. And time and again, the betrayal continues.

Reports of veterans waiting months—years—for basic medical care, for life-saving surgeries, for mental health treatment, have become so commonplace that they barely register as news. A veteran in rural Alabama waits 233 days for a mental health appointment. A Marine in Arizona suffering from PTSD takes his own life after being told he must wait six months to see a doctor. An Army Ranger in Chicago, suffering from injuries sustained in combat, dies of an undiagnosed infection because his VA hospital misfiled his paperwork. These are not accidents. These are not bureaucratic mishaps. This is state-sanctioned neglect. This is not mere incompetence. This is institutional betrayal.

This is not bureaucracy. This is abandonment. This is what happens when a system designed to serve is instead used to stall, obstruct, and ultimately discard those it was meant to protect. The VA does not exist to heal veterans—it exists to manage them, to shuffle them through a gauntlet of inefficiency so dehumanizing that many give up before they ever receive care. The Washington Union Party refuses to accept this disgrace as the status quo. This system does not deserve to exist in its current form. It must be torn down, restructured, and built anew with accountability, efficiency, and an unwavering commitment to those who served.

A nation that treats its warriors as disposable does not deserve their sacrifice. A government that allows this level of rot and failure to persist does not deserve the loyalty of those it has betrayed. The Washington Union Party will end this cycle of neglect. No more hearings. No more empty investigations. No more bureaucratic excuses. The reckoning is long overdue, and it begins now.

The enemies of reform will say that the VA is simply underfunded, that its failures are due to budget constraints. This is a lie.

There is no shortage of money when it comes to funding foreign wars, no hesitance in approving defense contracts worth billions, no delays in arming allies overseas. The United States government has never paused to ask whether the price of war is too high when the bombs are falling, the tanks are rolling, and the defense contractors are lining their pockets. Yet when the time comes to care for those who bled for this nation, suddenly the budget is tight. Suddenly, the bureaucrats clutch their pearls and demand austerity. Suddenly, those who fought on foreign soil become an inconvenience to the same government that sent them there. This is not financial mismanagement—it is moral cowardice. It is the cold, calculated abandonment of those whose only crime was answering their nation’s call.

The Pentagon spends $850 billion a year on defense, a budget so vast that it eclipses the next ten countries combined. We send billions in military aid to nations across the world—$113 billion to Ukraine, $38 billion to Israel, untold billions to Afghanistan before it collapsed into Taliban hands. There is always money for foreign wars, for proxy conflicts, for rebuilding the infrastructure of nations that did not spill a single drop of American blood to defend our freedom. But when our veterans return home, when their bodies are broken and their minds shattered by war, they are met with delays, denials, and bureaucratic neglect.

This is not an accident. It is a pattern—one that stretches back generations, one that proves, time and again, that the American government does not value its veterans. It values what they can do in war, not what they need in peace. After World War I, veterans marched on Washington demanding their promised bonuses, only to be attacked by their own government, beaten back by soldiers under the command of Douglas MacArthur. After Vietnam, returning soldiers were not welcomed home as heroes, but spat upon, ignored, discarded. The post-9/11 generation of veterans has been sent into wars without end, only to come home to a VA that cannot even process their medical claims in a timely manner.

Where is the urgency? Where is the blank check for their survival? The same government that can send $3 million to study the mating habits of shrimp claims it cannot afford to provide timely mental health care for those suffering from PTSD. The same politicians who rubber-stamp $10 million to build schools in Afghanistan cannot find the funds to keep veteran suicide hotlines staffed. This is not just a failure of policy—it is a failure of character. It is a government that would rather fund endless war than fulfill its obligations to the warriors it creates.

The Washington Union Party refuses to accept this betrayal.

We will not allow another dollar to be sent overseas until every American veteran receives the care they were promised. We will not tolerate a system where defense contractors feast while veterans starve. If this government can afford to send young men and women into battle, it can damn well afford to care for them when they return. No more excuses. No more delays. America must take care of its own first. Anything less is a disgrace.

The Washington Union Party rejects this betrayal. We will not allow another generation of veterans to be swallowed by the system. We will demand nothing less than a complete overhaul of the VA from top to bottom. This means dismantling the bureaucratic labyrinth that forces veterans to wade through endless paperwork just to receive the care they were promised. This means implementing direct accountability—any official, administrator, or doctor who obstructs or delays a veteran’s care will be fired, prosecuted, and barred from ever working in public service again. This means an immediate expansion of medical services, mental health support, and housing assistance—not as a gesture, not as a temporary fix, but as a permanent, ironclad guarantee to every veteran who has served this nation.

It is not enough to merely reform the VA. We must restore dignity to the veterans who have been discarded. There must be a reckoning for the generations of neglect. No veteran should ever be homeless in the wealthiest nation on Earth. No veteran should ever die waiting for care. No veteran should ever feel that their country values them only in war but abandons them in peace. The Washington Union Party will eliminate veteran homelessness with the same urgency as a national security crisis, because that is exactly what it is. Veterans who have sacrificed everything should not be abandoned to sleep on the sidewalks of the nation they defended. This is a disgrace. This is unforgivable. And this will not stand.

Those who have led us to this point—who have allowed the VA to crumble, who have let corruption fester, who have sat idly by while veterans have suffered and died—must be held accountable. Their names will not be forgotten. Their failure will not be excused. This system is rotten to its core, and it will be torn apart and rebuilt with ruthless efficiency. There will be no half-measures, no incremental reforms, no endless congressional hearings that result in nothing but empty rhetoric. The Washington Union Party demands a Veterans' Bill of Rights, enshrining into law the unbreakable guarantee that no veteran will ever again be abandoned. It will be the highest standard of care, not a minimal handout, but a sacred contract between the nation and those who risked everything for it.

Let those who resist reform be warned: the American people will not forget. The veterans of this nation will not forget. The families who have watched their loved ones suffer and die waiting for care will not forget. The Washington Union Party will not forget. We are coming to dismantle the system of neglect, to strip away the corruption, to put an end to the disgrace that has plagued this nation for far too long. Our veterans deserve better. Our nation must be better. And we will not rest until every single one of them is treated with the dignity, the honor, and the care that they earned.

No government that abandons its warriors deserves to stand. No institution that thrives on incompetence, that profits from the suffering of those who fought for this Republic, should be allowed to exist a moment longer than necessary. The Department of Veterans Affairs has become a mausoleum of broken promises, a graveyard where patriotism is reduced to bureaucratic indifference. The blood and sacrifice of our heroes are repaid with endless paperwork, indifferent administrators, and waitlists that serve as slow death sentences. This is not mismanagement. This is not inefficiency. This is betrayal.

Those who stand in the way of reform—the politicians who make speeches but pass no laws, the bureaucrats who shuffle paper while veterans die, the lobbyists who siphon money from programs meant to heal our warriors—will be called to account. Their names will be etched into history, not as leaders, not as public servants, but as cowards who looked the wounded in the eye and turned their backs. They will not be remembered kindly. They will be remembered as those who delayed, obstructed, and sabotaged efforts to restore dignity to our veterans. And when the reckoning comes, when the corrupt and the complacent are swept away, there will be no sympathy for them, no second chances, no forgiveness.

The American people will no longer tolerate the disgrace of a nation that sends its sons and daughters to fight but abandons them when the battle is over. It is said that a nation is judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. If that is true, then America has failed. If that is true, then we have spent generations dishonoring those who have honored us with their service. But that failure ends now. That disgrace will be wiped away by the fury of a people who have had enough. Veterans do not beg. Veterans do not plead. Veterans will demand what is rightfully theirs.

For decades, reform has been promised and never delivered. We are here to say: no more. No more committees with no action. No more investigations that lead nowhere. No more symbolic gestures while the suffering continues. This is a war against corruption. This is a war against indifference. This is a war to reclaim the soul of a nation that must prove it is worthy of those who have fought for it.

The Washington Union Party stands for every veteran who has been forgotten. For every family who has buried a warrior because the care they needed came too late. For every soldier, sailor, airman, and Marine who came home to find that their nation had no place for them, that the country they served had moved on without them. That era is over. The reckoning is here. And we will not stop until justice is done.

A government that sends its soldiers to fight must never abandon them when they come home. A government that claims to honor its veterans must prove it through action, not words. And a government that fails to uphold this most sacred duty does not deserve the loyalty of the men and women who risked everything for its survival. The Washington Union Party will not allow this betrayal to continue. The reckoning has come. The age of excuses is over. Veterans will no longer beg for scraps from the government they fought to defend. They will be honored. They will be cared for. They will be treated as the warriors and patriots they are.

This is the fight before us. And we will not lose.

No more ceremonies that serve only as a salve for national guilt. No more empty proclamations about patriotism from politicians who would rather fund war than heal its casualties. No more folded flags handed to grieving families while the living are left to rot in forgotten hospital wings, waiting for care that never comes. This nation’s treatment of its veterans is not just a failure—it is a sin against those who have given everything. And sins must be atoned for.

The government of the United States has betrayed its warriors, not once, not twice, but systematically, generation after generation. The nation that built the most powerful military in the world has simultaneously created one of the most disgraceful systems of veteran care in history. When Abraham Lincoln called upon the Union to care for those who had “borne the battle,” it was not a suggestion. It was a demand, a covenant between the nation and those who fought in its name. That covenant has been broken. That promise has been shattered. And now, we stand at the precipice where we must ask: Will this nation redeem itself, or will it be remembered as one that used its warriors and then discarded them like spent ammunition?

Every excuse has run its course. Every promise has been exposed as hollow. We do not seek hearings; we seek results. We do not ask for recognition; we demand justice. We do not wish for reform; we command it. The Washington Union Party does not grovel before corrupt institutions begging for change; we will tear those institutions apart and build something worthy of the American warrior. The VA, as it stands, is a disgrace to the Republic. It will either be rebuilt from the ground up or it will be buried beneath the weight of its own failure. There is no third option.

To the politicians who resist reform, who siphon resources away from veterans to fund pet projects, who protect their bloated bureaucracy at the cost of real lives: your time is up. You will be named. You will be remembered. Not as leaders, but as betrayers of the men and women who fought in your wars, who defended your nation, who bled for your freedom. You will not hide behind hearings, behind commissions, behind partisan gridlock. You will answer for what you have allowed to happen.

To the people of this nation, the choice is clear: stand with the warriors who defended this Republic, or stand with the bureaucrats who abandoned them. Support reform that obliterates the rot within the VA, or continue watching veterans die waiting for help. There is no middle ground. There is no waiting for another election cycle, no trusting in promises that have already been broken a thousand times. There is only action or betrayal.

Veterans will no longer be afterthoughts. They will no longer be obstacles in a bloated system. They will no longer be tokens of political speeches. They will be honored, respected, and cared for. The Washington Union Party will not stop until every veteran receives the care they were promised, until the last homeless warrior has shelter, until the final bureaucrat standing in the way of justice is removed from their post.

The time for half-measures is over. The reckoning is here. The battle for justice is now. This is the final call. Stand with our veterans, or stand aside.

America will answer for its neglect.