Throughout the 2020 presidential campaign, candidate Joe Biden spoke often of America’s “sacred obligation to our veterans.” Biden, like all but one of the American presidents who have served in the 21st century, is not a veteran himself, but he refers proudly to his deceased son Beau Biden, a veteran who served for a year in Iraq as a member of the 261st Theater Tactical Signal Brigade, and who died a few years later of brain cancer. The tragedies that have shaped Joe Biden’s character are well-known and don’t need to be repeated here, but in temperament and personal experience, President Biden is well-suited to serve not only as the nation’s commander-in-chief, but also as its empathizer-in-chief, and he has repeatedly expressed his commitment to ensuring the well-being of veterans.
To that end, Biden picked Denis McDonough to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs and this past February the appointment was confirmed by the Senate in an 87-7 vote. McDonough previously served as White House Chief of Staff during President Barack Obama’s second term, but he is only the second VA secretary never to have served in the armed forces. (Former President Donald Trump’s first appointment to head the VA, David Shulkin, was not a veteran either.) The new VA chief does have a thorough understanding of how the federal government ticks, however, and during his confirmation hearing McDonough asserted that he will be able to “unstick problems” that have been become tangled in bureaucracy.
Of course, many of his predecessors at the VA had vowed to do the same. A quick tour through the history of America’s veteran-related policies demonstrates why “unsticking” may be easier said than done.
Over this country’s nearly 250-year history, generations of America’s service members have been called to duty in more than 90 armed conflicts. Along with the major wars that American schoolchildren learn about in their history classes, lesser-known conflicts such as the Quasi-War, the Barbary Wars, Operation Beleaguer and dozens more have engaged the U.S. military and resulted in American casualties.
For the purposes of this exercise, however, we’ll focus on only the major military actions.
According to a report prepared for Congress by the Congressional Research Service, over 6000 American fighters sustained battle-related injuries during the American Revolutionary War and survived. This made them eligible for benefits promised by the Continental Congress, but only about half of the survivors drew any pension and in the early years following the war those payments were left up to individual states. Once the federal government was reorganized under the U.S. Constitution, however, Congress took on the responsibility of making pension payments.
When the British-American conflict reignited in the War of 1812, another 4500 American soldiers, sailors and marines suffered non-mortal wounds. The U.S. government expanded its pension system, and Congress eventually established a Bureau of Pensions to manage the claims and payments of injured veterans.
The Mexican War in the late 1840s resulted in a similar number of wounded veterans, but with the gradual passing of earlier generations of veterans, the workload of the Bureau maintained a kind of equilibrium.
Then the Civil War broke out. Fought on a totally different scale, this conflict was a game-changer. Millions fought in that war and hundreds of thousands of soldiers died. Hundreds of thousands more were afflicted with non-mortal wounds.
When the war ended, the federal government launched an effort to gather the remains of some 300,000 battlefield casualties and rebury them in 70 new national cemeteries. Congress also funded the building of soldiers’ homes to care
Barbara Lloyd McMichael’s monthly column examines the history of key government agencies and how they are “Building Back Better” under the Biden Administration.
by
Denis McDonough, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs