BEFORE YOU VOTE LOCALLY REPUBLICAN PLATFORM 2016

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and their families’ care and dignity. The work of the
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is essential
to meet our commitments to them: Providing
health, education, disability, survivor, and home
loan benefits, and arranging memorial services
upon death. We heed Abraham Lincoln’s command
“to care for him who bore the battle.” To care,
as well, for the families of those who have made
the ultimate sacrifice, who must be assured of
meaningful financial assistance, remains our solemn
duty.
As shown by recent controversies at the
Department, senior leaders must be held
accountable for ensuring that their subordinates
are more responsive to veterans’ needs. The VA
has failed those who have sacrificed the most for
our freedom. The VA must move from a sometimes
adversarial stance to an advocacy relationship with
vets. To that end, we will empower the Secretary
to hold all VA employees accountable and will seek
fundamental change in the VA’s senior leadership
structure by placing presidential appointees, rather
than careerists, in additional positions of significant
responsibility. We cannot allow an unresponsive
bureaucracy to blunt our national commitment. The
VA must strengthen and improve its efforts through
partnerships with private enterprises, veteran
service organizations, technology and innovation,
and competitive bidding to enable the VA to better
provide both quality and timely care along with all
earned benefits to our nation’s veterans and their
families. This will allow the VA to reduce the backlog
and save immense resources all at the same time.
Therefore, let us look to innovative solutions that
allow higher quality VA care, reduce backlogs, and
save immense resources all at the same time.
Our wounded warriors, whether still in service
or discharged, deserve the best medical care the
country can provide. We must make military and
veterans’ medicine the gold standard for mental
health, traumatic brain injury, multiple traumas,
loss of limbs, and post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD). Those injuries require a new commitment of
targeted resources and personnel for treatment and
care to advance recovery. That includes allowing
veterans to choose to access care in the community
and not just in VA facilities, because the best care in
the world is not effective if it is not accessible. We
will seek to consolidate the VA’s existing community
care authorities to make a single program that will
be easily understood by both veterans and VA
healthcare providers.
Like the rest of American medicine, the VA
faces a critical shortage of primary care and mental
health physicians. That’s why there are long waiting
times to see a doctor and why doctors are often
frustrated by the limited time they have with their
patients. This is especially the case with mental
health care, which often amounts to prescribing
drugs because there are not enough psychologists
and psychiatrists to do anything else. Inadequate
treatment of PTSD drives other problems like
suicide, homelessness, and unemployment. This
situation may not be quickly reversed, but a
Republican administration will begin, on day one, to
undertake the job.
As a nation, we honor the sacrifice of our fallen
service members at the graves where we lay them
to rest in national, state, and veterans’ cemeteries
around the world. In doing so, we make it clear
that their ultimate sacrifice and service to our
country will never be forgotten. As a party, we seek
to honor their sacrifice and comfort their families
by ensuring all veterans’ cemeteries are adequately
equipped and a standard of care established, using
Arlington Cemetery as a guide, that is befitting their
service.
The level of financial distress and homelessness
among vets is a shame to the nation. For a
veteran, a job is more than a source of income. It is
a new mission, with a new status, and the transition
can be difficult. We urge the private sector to
make hiring vets a company policy and commend
the organizations that have proven programs to
accomplish this. We will retain the preference
given to veterans when they seek federal
employment. We urge closer coordination with the
state offices for veterans’ affairs, particularly with
regard to expediting disability claims, since those
closest to an individual can often best diagnose
a problem and apply a remedy. We will halt the
current Administration’s unconstitutional automatic
denial of gun ownership to returning members of
our Armed Forces who have had representatives
appointed to manage their financial affairs. We
urge state education officials to promote the hiring
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