The Price of Heroism

At his recent press conference, the President honored those soldiers who sacrificed life and limb on the battlefields of Indochina. Just a week later, the Veterans Administration submitted "draft proposals" to Congress that would make a budget cut at the expense of those same war heroes. Veterans Administrator Donald E. Johnson said that the plan would lower payments for disability ratings held less than 20 years. Thus a Viet Nam veteran with a leg amputated at the hip would have his monthly compensation reduced from about $375 to $200; a veteran who lost his arm below the elbow would receive about $175 instead of $310. Congress, of course, is already preparing to fight the cut if the Administration really presses it, which seems unlikely.

By the VA's own figures, 200,000 veterans stand to lose under the newly proposed scale; yet at the same time the VA plans an increase in the compensation to 325,000 veterans suffering from psychiatric problems, on the theory that disabilities of the mind impair earning capacity more than damage to muscle and bone. The VA may be right, but it would not be easy to determine the extent of--or the cure for--those psychiatric problems. In a sense, the entire nation has suffered some psychic damage because of Viet Nam.

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