By Mark Fischenich

MANKATO — Congressman Tim Walz, who serves on the House Veterans Affairs Committee and has made veterans benefits a priority in his first year in office, said the federal government will need to act to ensure health care for returning soldiers keeps up with the growing demand.

“For the past half-dozen years, the administration’s budgets that passed this Congress haven’t addressed this growing problem,” said Walz, DFL-Mankato.

The issue now has the attention of lawmakers in Washington, however, and the proposed budget for veterans programs — tied up in the budget battle between congressional Democrats and President Bush — makes a number of improvements, according to Walz.

There’s a $13 billion influx of funding, an increase in the number of inspectors general to investigate the quality of care being provided and more attention to mental health issues such as suicide prevention, he said.

But Congress and future presidents will have to make a long-term commitment to veterans services because the young soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan won’t be going away.

“We’re going to have to have honest budgets in the future,” said Walz, who was quick to express gratitude for the work of front-line VA staff. “...

I think the VA does many, many things right, but they’re being asked to do more and more with less and less.”

So far, there have been few complaints from Mankato-area veterans that the VA health care system is incapable of adequately handling an influx of new patients returning from war zones.

“We haven’t really experienced a lot of problems here,” said Gary Evenson, Blue Earth County’s Veterans Service officer. “We can usually get them in there as quickly as we need to.”

The number of veterans seeking medical assistance from the Veterans Affairs medical system has increased noticeably with the return of 2,600 Minnesota National Guard troops from Iraq and the return of other veterans from both there and Afghanistan. But Evenson said Blue Earth County soldiers have escaped the most debilitating physical injuries associated with the two wars — amputations and severe brain injuries caused by roadside bombs.

“The mental health aspects of this seem to be more at the front,” according to Evenson, who said today’s generation of soldiers are more willing to confront post traumatic stress disorder and other psychological impacts of military service.

Area veterans are also fortunate to be within a 90-minute drive of the VA hospital in south Minneapolis, he said. And any future returning veterans with multiple injuries — including amputations, blindness and traumatic brain injuries — will have easy access to the Minneapolis-based Level One Polytrauma Center, one of only four in the nation.

So far, veterans working with Evenson’s office haven’t complained about the care they’re getting.

“We haven’t really gotten any negative feedback, so we assume it’s going well for them,” he said.