13 to 30 million dollars for a parade to celebrate the troops.
Won’t that be all glamour and glitz.
What a show. What great television. What a chance for Captain Bone Spurs to look strong and so American.
The low price tag for Trump’s Soviet style military parade is set at $12 million, but that is the cost to the Pentagon.
What needs to be added to that minimum figure is the cost of security, sprucing up the venue for attendees and the television audience, and this will require sanitation, street cleaning, and the removal of those things considered unsightly.
Among those things unsightly?
Homeless people.
Can’t have homeless people sitting in doorways, sleeping on benches, looking in a dumpster for something to eat, or just walking among the crowd in their Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes who will reflexively move away so as not to be touched.
People will be there to see the crisp uniforms, shiny metal objects, precise marching, military vehicles, and the president luxuriating in the parade he wants so he will have another feather in his cap, Something mother would pat him on the head for.
They don’t want to have to see the homeless, especially any with a mental disorder.
Sad part is that as they cheer for the parade on the street and scream their support of the troops, the onlookers will not realize that among the homeless they avoid and reject are veterans, the former troops they claim to support,
There are presently around 49,933 homeless vets of which, while the majority are male, 8% are female.
While 10% of the veterans are African American with 4% Hispanic, these two groups make up 40% of homeless vets.
50% of homeless vets are between 18 and 50 years old, whereas 30% of all veterans are between 18 and 50.
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Some veterans may have remained state-side for the length of their service, but 33% of homeless veterans were stationed in a war zone at some time with 66% having seen action for at least three years.
The compensation vets receive still leaves more than 40,000 homeless vets unable to find affordable housing, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. This results in
returning veterans being twice as likely to become chronically homeless as other Americans, with female veterans four times as likely to become homeless as male veterans.
Not every returning veteran comes home whole. There are physical and psychological wounds. More than 50% of homeless veterans suffer from disabilities. About 66% have substance abuse issues.
The average length of time the average homeless citizen spends homeless before dying or finding a way out is four years. For veterans that time is six years.
Meanwhile those who crow loudest that they support the troops, that is the president and the GOP in congress who are in a position to prove that support not just when a soldier in uniform makes for a good photo-op, or it’s cute when some returning vet surprises a child at school, when they come home after having served, wanted to cut the annual disability benefits for vets needing them from around $35,000 to around $13,000.
President Trump instituted a hiring freeze for the federal government. With 30% of federal employees hired in 2015 being veterans, 50% of those being veterans with disabilities, this freeze disproportionately affects veterans. He also has proposed budget cuts that would result in thousands of veterans losing access to job training programs and related services.
Most veterans and their families depend on private health insurance and not the VA. Nearly 1.8 million veterans rely on Medicaid. Under the Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured veterans decreased nearly 40%. Getting rid of the ACA would stop Medicaid expansion which would cost 579,000 veterans their Medicaid coverage by 2027. Some veterans and their families could face exorbitant premium increases.
Veterans and their families make up a sizeable share of Americans facing food insecurity. Nearly 1 in 4 participants in a long-term study of veterans experienced food insecurity which makes it difficult to stay healthy, and van result in chronic health conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and depression. About 1.5 million veterans lived in households that rely on SNAP, and Trump proposed to cut SNAP reducing assistance for average of 400,000 veterans per year.
The GOP House cut $154 billion from SNAP over 10 years. More than 554,000 veterans could lose SNAP coverage each year between 2023 and 2027.
Trump had also proposed $72 billion in deep cuts to the nation’s disability supports over the next decade affecting the 1 million veterans who receive Social Security Disability Insurance benefits.
While more than 340,000 low-income veterans received rental assistance which plays a significant role in reducing veterans’ homelessness, Trump threatens to make veterans’ housing insecurity even worse by targeting rental assistance programs for cuts. He proposed budget cuts to the Housing Choice Voucher program that would reduce the ability to afford housing and avoid homelessness among veterans who do not receive assistance through the HUD-VASH program.
Of the 5.3 million veterans with disabilities, half a million live below the federal poverty line and are eligible for housing assistance through the Section 811 program, which supports the expansion of affordable, accessible housing for people with disabilities. If Trump gets his wish to cut this program, it would also affect veterans who reside in public housing units in need of major repairs as struggling veterans residing in distressed public housing units would continue to live in unsafe conditions.
But let’s use money that could help vets to hold a big, unnecessary parade because won’t the visuals look good.
And, I bet if a contingent of homeless vets showed up to be part of the parade that is meant to salute them, they will be kept from participating because they won’t match the fantasy of supporting the troops the president wants on display.