Rebuilding America’s military and honoring the debt owed to millions of veterans were always central to President Donald Trump’s agenda.
While the Democrat candidates hoping to challenge him in November made their final push in Nevada, the president was in Colorado Springs to highlight what he’s accomplished for our soldiers and veterans over the past three years. At The Broadmoor World Arena on Thursday, he stood before thousands of supporters in one of the largest active duty and veteran communities in the country, and expressed the nation’s gratitude to the brave men and women who defend our freedoms.
“Because America is truly a land of heroes, on behalf of the grateful nation I would like to recognize the many veterans of the Vietnam War and the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars who are here this evening,” the president said, emphasizing that America’s veterans are “great people.”
When President Trump took office in January 2017, the American military was dangerously worn down by 16 years of near-constant war across the world, hamstrung by a stalled and mismanaged procurement process, and threatened with forced budget cuts under “sequestration.” In each of his first three budget proposals, President Trump requested and received new funds for the military. From better pay for our troops, to a spurt of shipbuilding, to vital replacement aircraft such as Northrop Grumman’s world-beating prototype stealth bomber — the B-21 Raider — the Trump administration has been a transformational boon.
The rebirth of America’s military from the ashes of the global war on terror into an effective tool of 21st-century statecraft is perhaps best exemplified by the inauguration of the first new branch of the armed forces since the Air Force was established in 1947: the Space Force. Colorado Springs has long been a hub of America’s military presence in space, and that role will only become more significant as we transition toward an independent service for space-based warfare.
The U.S. Space Force is assuming control of space operations here at Peterson and Schriever Air Force bases, and the Air Force Academy will soon be turning out a new generation of Space Force officers who will ensure American domination of the high-altitude and orbital battlefields of the future.
But just as service members have a duty to look ahead to defense needs of the nation, the civilians they serve have a duty to repay the service of those who sacrificed so much of the last two decades.
Accordingly, the Department of Veterans Affairs has received dramatic increases in funding over the past three years. In fact, the VA was given its largest budget in Fiscal Year 2019 — over $200 billion.
Given the deplorable state of the VA in the latter years of the Obama administration — when veterans were literally dying while waiting for routine care — reform was every bit as important as funding. President Trump has signed no fewer than four major bills overhauling the department and ensuring accountability in the VA bureaucracy so that our veterans can have absolute confidence that they’ll receive the care they were promised.
“We have totally transformed veteran’s health care, including getting the long sought VA Choice and VA Accountability,” the president said in Colorado Springs. “So, now if our veterans have to wait in line, they go out to a doctor, a local doctor, we pay the bill and they’re all set. They don’t have to wait for six weeks.”
Finally, using his statutory authority, the president has secured military construction funding to complete the single most important piece of infrastructure for America’s security and sovereignty: the wall on our southern border. A country without borders is not a country, and the military’s first duty is to secure those borders. To that end, U.S. troops have continually deployed to the border to assist U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and other federal law enforcement agencies in ending the humanitarian and national security crisis.
Their job will be made immeasurably easier with the construction of the long-awaited wall.
As he always does, President Trump relished the opportunity to explain how his agenda is making America safe and secure again when he visited Colorado Springs. Of course, the veterans and active-duty soldiers who live in Colorado Springs were well aware of that.
Kristi Burton Brown is the Colorado GOP vice chairman and an attorney focusing on public policy and the First Amendment and sanctity of life issues.
