Seen “The Family Stone”?
Diane Keaton as a dying mom who can't break the news to her kids. Dermot Mulroney as her son who brings home one gal, but falls for another. Sarah Jessica Parker as a visitor about as politically correct as Chris Matthews on caffeine.
At its core, the movie is about how self-centeredness can strain relations and kill any sense of family unity. At various points over the decades, the people elected to represent California in Washington, D.C., have demonstrated a similar trait, which has – like the 2005 holiday movie – left much-needed cohesion elusive.
Seven years ago in this newspaper, I wrote that although there was an energy crisis, looming water shortages and a housing crunch, our representatives were bickering over the redrawing of congressional boundaries and dickering with a GOP White House intent on ignoring them. As for the five members elected from San Diego, they could not even communicate effectively on whether to move the Marine Corps Recruit Depot from San Diego to Orange County.
Seven years laters, there is an energy crisis, looming water shortages and a housing fiasco. There still is not a lot good to say about cooperation among the state's representatives, but we can point to at least one constituency that seems well represented by the five from San Diego.
Veterans.
Perhaps because four of San Diego's representatives sit on congressional committees that oversee military affairs – and perhaps because we are four months from a congressional election – veterans are recently the beneficiaries of everything from new housing programs to new suicide-prevention hotlines.
WHAT THEY'RE DOING
Rep. Bob Filner, the San Diego Democrat who is chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, in the past month alone arranged symposiums that examined the claims backlog at the Department of Veterans Affairs, post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, the latter considered the signature injury of the war in Iraq.
Recently, Filner helped to shepherd through Congress bills that would pay full tuition at a four-year university for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, give money to the U.S. Olympics Committee to create activities for veterans with disabilities, help veterans readjust after deployments and provide mental health treatment for veterans' relatives.
Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Carlsbad, also sits on Veterans' Affairs. Last summer, Bilbray hosted workshops highlighting the services available to San Diego veterans and made sure his constituents knew about a national suicide-prevention hotline when it was created last July.
Rep. Susan Davis, the San Diego Democrat who is chairwoman of the House Armed Services' Military Personnel Subcommittee, sponsored two recently signed bills, both inspired by the stories of veterans in her district.
Davis' Home Ownership for America's Veterans Act gives veterans a leg up in California's high-cost housing market by letting them take advantage of the Cal-Vet home-loan program administered by the California Department of Veterans Affairs.
The Service Members' Civil Relief Act lends a hand to those called to duty while in college. It caps the student-loan interest of active military personnel at 6 percent while they are deployed, requires colleges and universities to refund tuition for credits that weren't earned because of deployment and guarantees soldiers a place at school when they get home. Finally, it gives the returning veteran a 13-month grace period before he or she must begin paying off a student loan.
Rep. Duncan Hunter of Alpine – the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, not to mention a 28-year member of the panel and its former chairman and a military veteran himself – recently devoted his time to ensuring that a Vietnam veteran received a belated award for valor.
Admittedly, catering to veterans is not as difficult as, say, figuring out how to lower the price of gas. Gas is tricky – fraught with foreign entanglements and special interests swimming in money.
Veterans are easier. Their needs are generally a matter of money, and not as prone to ideological or partisan squabbling. Moreover, there are lots of them in San Diego County and they tend to vote. If you're a politician looking for a cause, what's not to like?
Dana Wilkie is a Washington-based correspondent for The San Diego Union-Tribune and a longtime observer of California politics and social issues.
