Legislation 2011 - Camp Lejeune: Time to speak up for veterans, active military

Attention military personnel, active, retired, Reserve and Guard. Congress is in session, and we are on the chopping block.

On June 7, the Senate Veterans Services Committee voted to transfer Defense Department support funds for military and commissaries to the Veterans Affairs Department, where they would be used for the medical care and consequences of cancer victims among some 600,000 U.S. Marine Corps personnel and their families at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The water supply on base was contaminated from 1957 to 1988, attributed to "lax oversight."

However, this misguided approach will probably shut down military commissaries and exchanges; this action punishes military personnel worldwide, most especially young families, by about $3,500 a year.

All military personnel, including combat forces, reserves, retired will be affected in this coming budget. Not just equipment, but our pay, health care, retirement systems, manpower, will bear the brunt in the oncoming budget.

Please send me messages to our Congressional delegation. Contact the Retired Enlisted Association at www.capwiz.com/trea/issues/bills and/or the Military Officers Association at www.moaa.com.

The Source

Camp Lejeune - Bill would aid Camp Lejeune Marines

Bill would aid Camp Lejeune Marines

The Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee unanimously approved a bill Wednesday to provide medical care for Marines — and, in certain circumstances, their families — who served on Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base in North Carolina and were exposed to contaminated water there.

Under the deal cut by Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Patty Murray (D-Wash.) DoD will foot the bill of the legislation and the VA will provide the care for the treatment for any veteran who served on the base for any reason. Dependents of those veterans, however, must prove a “causal relationship” with the illness they suffer from and the water contamination, according to the bill. HHS officials have been studying the problem since 2005 to determine who has been harmed by the contamination.