The 51 veterans who’d boarded a bus outside the Lakeside VA Medical Center at 4:30 in the afternoon on the Wednesday before Memorial Day had arrived in Washington late the following morning, gotten lost, missed breakfast at the Senate, missed their rally in Upper Senate Park, and were now sitting in a hearing room at the Cannon House Office Building grumbling at Congressman Luis Gutierrez, just as they’d done a half dozen times in Chicago. “I’ve had this conversation with you before,” Gutierrez said. “Do you think there’s anything you’re going to tell me this morning that you haven’t already shared with me?” Had they come all this way to say the same things they’d said to him back in March at the American Legion Hall on Cortland?
Crump hadn’t put the junket together by herself. John Borg, the president of Veterans for Unification, a grassroots group dedicated to fighting the downsizing of the VA, had gotten the word out to other veterans’ organizations and then shadowed the bus in his car all the way to Washington.
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No one slept much en route, but at least the wake-up call playing over the bus’s sound system at 5 AM was B.B. King’s “Never Make a Move Too Soon” rather than reveille.
Along with Lane Evans, Democratic congressman from Illinois, Smith, a New Jersey Republican, had introduced H.R. 5250, a bill aimed at solving the Veterans Health Administration’s annual budget problems by making the funding for veterans’ health care mandatory. But the bill died in the 107th Congress and wasn’t getting anywhere in the 108th. It, as much as anything, was what the veterans had come to Washington for.
Parry said the next move should be to split up into two groups: one going to Hastert’s office and the other to Jan Schakowsky’s. “Don’t waste time talking to your friends,” Bradley advised, recommending that they go in full strength to see House majority leader Tom DeLay instead of visiting Schakowsky.
“And what would your recommendation to the representative be?” Parry asked. “You’re the staff person for veterans’ affairs, right?”
“OK,” Crump said, “this is just the beginning of our presence. We gave you a couple of cards and we would really appreciate correspondence back from him saying what his position is and what his future position could be.”
