It would be a critical error for either the White House or Congress to address Walter Reed without taking the opportunity to address the larger issue: Troops and veterans are not getting the care they deserve, in both the system for active-duty soldiers, which costs about $50 billion a year, and the Veterans Health Administration, which has a budget of about $35 billion for health care for 5.3 million vets, but still generates complaints of waits for all services.

Indeed, former Sen. Bob Dole and ex-Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala have indicated that the commission they are heading on the matter will go deeper than just Walter Reed, and examine the entire system, including the VA.

This is a good start, and long overdue. Yet, the commission will take months to write a report. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of veterans of Iraq, and the millions overall, will continue to be shortchanged by the current system.

For them, one of the scariest propositions is the budget submitted for the coming year by the Bush administration. According to the Independent Budget, a document created by the nation's top veterans advocacy groups, the VA needs just over $44 billion this year to handle the current load, and help ensure that the agency isn't in the red as it prepares for an influx of new troops from Iraq.

Not only does the White House proposal fall short by more than $10 billion, but after a slight increase to the VA budget this year, it proposes cuts to the VA in 2009 and 2010. That would be just around the time the next president most likely finds a way out of Iraq, and a flood of troops come home. While Democrats in Congress propose adding a couple of billion to the president's request, it is still woefully short of the need.

What does this mean for our veterans, in real terms?

Already, because of cuts in previous years, VA centers have closed, forcing veterans to travel long distances to get care. Some centers have reported that they had to put "kill orders" on new equipment they needed, meaning diagnosis of veterans could be delayed, or flat out wrong.

Too many veterans are facing ridiculously long waits at VA centers for care because there simply isn't enough staff to handle the caseload. Shockingly, some amputees have even reported the need to fiddle with their prosthetics because their VA center couldn't find one that fit.

The financial shortchanging of the Veterans Affairs Department is something that doesn't need a commission study to fix immediately. Yes, there are larger systemic issues with bureaucracy that must be fixed, and that is something Dole and Shalala will address.

In the meantime, however, both the White House and Congress should reexamine their willingness to underfund the VA out of much needed resources for the the purpose of budgetary games.

We urge all who support the military to call on their members of Congress and Sens. Bob Casey (202-224-6324) and Arlen Specter (202-224-4254) to let them know that those who served our nation deserve nothing less. *