⚔️ Veterans for Peace Pt 1 — VFW Convention – Ronald Reagan 1980 * PITD

Veterans for Peace Pt 1 — VFW Convention – #RonaldReagan 1980 * #PITD
Address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Chicago August 18, 1980 Excerpt
I know you have broken a 80-year precedent to make this endorsement, and I only hope that four years from now you will be as happy with me as I am with you today. Because, my friends, nothing would mean more to me as President than to live up to your trust.
I also know full well today that the last four commanders of the VFW have all been Democrats. But this endorsement sends a message ringing across the land: when it comes to keeping America strong, when it comes to keeping America great, when it comes to keeping America at peace, then none of us can afford to be simply a Democrat or a Republican – we must all stand united as Americans.
And that is what I intend to do in this campaign and in the next four years: to unite people of every background and faith in a great crusade to restore the America of our dreams.
America has been sleepwalking far too long. We have to snap out of it, and with your help, that's exactly what we're going to do.
The high and noble purpose of your great organization, to "honor the dead by helping the living," is personified by your gratuitous representation of veterans, their widows and orphans in claims with the Veteran Administration through your nationwide network of skilled service officers and, also, before the various discharge review and correction boards within the Department of Defense.
With respect to your legislative efforts to assist veterans, my colleagues inform me that your representatives in your Washington office, under the dynamic leadership of Cooper Holt, are highly professional, highly effective and highly respected within the halls of Congress. True, and most unfortunately your impressive legislative accomplishments of Congresses past have not been duplicated this second session of the 96th Congress. Not because your representatives have been found wanting in this area, but solely because this present anti-veteran administration has stacked the deck against you through the vast power of the White House. It has not escaped me that the Carter Administration has cut the Veterans Administration budget each and every year of its incumbency with respect to the Federal budget while our veteran population of 30 million is the highest in the history of our great republic. Where has the money denied our deserving veterans gone? Surely not to our national defense which is in shambles.
to me it is unconscionable that veterans in need are denied hospital and medical care because of inadequate funding which has closed hospital beds and cut health-care personnel within the VA.
to me it is a breach of faith that compensation for those with service-connected disabilities has not kept abreast of inflation and that the administration rammed through Congress a pension program admittedly designed to deny such to World War II and subsequent veterans and their survivors.
to me it is the height of hypocrisy for the administration in high sounding words to repeatedly tell us how much we owe our Vietnam veterans and, then, only in this election year recommend a stingy 10 percent increase in the GI bill when these veterans have not had an increase since 1977 and the Congressional Budget Office has stated they now need a 30 percent increase to catch-up.
to me the cruelest betrayal of all was the administration's proposed national health plan which, if passed, would have made the VA hospital and medical care system the nucleus of national health insurance. This, following repeated statements by the President that he supported the continued presence of an independent, progressive system of VA hospitals.
to me it is regrettable and insensitive of the administration to drag its feet in providing open national cemeteries in which veterans can be interred near their survivors. And finally today let me personally pledge to uphold veteran's preference in Federal employment and to see it is strictly enforced in all federally funded programs.
If you have any suggestions, questions or concerns please leave them below. Thanks for watching and make it an outstanding day! *** I am a proud American, blessed father, a staunch 2A activist and a Marine Corps Veteran that just happens to be 100% blind. This is a look at the Second Amendment, firearms, self Defense, Constitutionally protected rights, Liberty and Freedom from the perspective of a Visually Impaired, Blind American.
#PatriotInTheDark
PatriotInTheDark@gmail.com
Disclaimer: No purchase necessary, must abide by all state and federal laws. Void where prohibited. No Puppies or sighted people were hurt during the filming of these videos.
Reagan Presidential Library:
www.reaganlibrary.gov
President Reagan's Foundation:
http://www.reaganfoundation.org