Politics & Power Quote by John Salazar

The line lands as an indictment disguised as a civic truism: if you have to wait for a crisis to take care of veterans, you were never serious about “supporting the troops” in the first place. Salazar’s key move is to make “emergency” the tell. Emergencies are politically useful because they justify sudden spending and urgent press conferences; they let administrations look responsive without admitting they neglected the problem for years. By insisting it “shouldn’t take” one, he’s attacking the incentives that turn veterans’ health into a headline cycle instead of a standing obligation.

The subtext is aimed at a familiar Washington pattern: wars are funded with patriotic momentum, while the long tail - injuries, PTSD, chronic care, claims backlogs, underbuilt facilities - gets pushed into the bureaucratic shadows. “Our nation’s heroes” isn’t just reverence; it’s a rhetorical trap. If opponents contest the funding, they risk looking like they’re stiffing heroes. If they agree, they’re conceding that the status quo has been morally out of alignment with the language of honor.

Pairing “funding the VA” with “bringing our troops home safely” widens the critique beyond clinics and benefits. It frames care as part of the same contract as deployment: the government’s responsibility doesn’t end when the plane lands. “Afterthought” is the sharpest word here, implying not only underfunding but a mindset - that veterans are treated as a political prop in wartime and an accounting problem afterward. In the post-9/11 era, that accusation carried real bite, because the gap between pro-military rhetoric and institutional follow-through had become harder to hide.