25 August, 2017
Reno Mayor Hillary Schieve had issued a statement asking Trump to use his speech Wednesday to "deliver a strong message rejecting racism, hate and violence".
Rebecca Coffman, with Concerned Veterans for America, said there has been real progress for veterans.
The president's speech in Reno was full of the calls for patriotism and national healing that would not have seemed out of the ordinary had they been uttered by previous occupants of the Oval Office.
The Legion chose to reaffirm its commitment Tuesday to a resolution the group first passed in 1923 - to decry any individual or group that creates discord over race, religion or socioeconomic class.
Trump also praised the VA for establishing a White House hot line for veterans, which was part of his 10-point plan to reform the VA. This legislation was in response to the 2014 VA waiting list scandal.
Look for Trump to say: "We are one people, with one home, and one flag". The hot line was supposed to start 24-hour service this month, but the VA announced it would be delayed until October 15. The bill was created and championed by a handful of veterans organizations working with Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate.
This is the fifth piece of legislation that Trump has signed into law that is designed specifically to help veterans - from the 21st Century GI Bill that expands college assistance for vets, to "the Accountability Act" that makes it easier to remove or demote VA employees who simply aren't getting the job done.
But the rest of the Trump agenda remains in limbo, as Congress will try to address health care, taxes, spending bills, the debt limit and much more when lawmakers return to legislative work after Labor Day.
"There are too many veterans trapped in a failing system that doesn't allow them to get the quality of care they need or the care they need in a timely fashion", she said. And the administration could face some challenges.
While speaking to the Legion crowd Wednesday, Shulkin promised he would not choose privatization.
"We worked hard to get this bill", Shulkin told Fox News.
As President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed another bill into law that was created to make internal reforms at the Department of Veterans Affairs, it was a fresh reminder that one of the few areas of legislative success for Congress and the Trump Administration in 2017 has come on a subject that has drawn strong bipartisan cooperation, with the simple goal of ensuring better treatment for the nation's veterans.
"What's going to happen is instead of filing supplemental appeals, everybody's going to file a supplemental claim and it's going to move the backlog from the appeals to the supplemental claims", said John Wells, executive director of the Military-Veterans Advocacy Inc.
The new law breaks the appeals process down into three "lanes".
