GOP Candidates Debate Veteran Aid (ContributorNetwork)

American veterans have the daunting task of overcoming the physical and psychological traumas of war and integrating into a society with an ailing economy and unwelcoming job market. In fact, according to CNN's John King, a startling 22 percent of post-9/11 veterans aged 18 to 24 are currently unemployed.

The candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination were asked during the South Carolina GOP debate what they would do to facilitate veterans' transition back home.

Here is what they said, according to a debate transcript provided by the Chicago Sun-Times:

* Ron Paul: "We can create a healthy economic environment if we did the right things. But where the veterans really deserve help, both as a physician and as a congressman, is the people who've come back and aren't doing well health-wise. They need a lot more help. We have an epidemic now of suicide of our military coming back. So they need a lot of medical help, and I think they come up shortchanged. They came up shortchanged after Vietnam War, Persian Gulf War and even now. They don't get care from the Veterans Administration."

* Rick Santorum: "I grew up on VA grounds ? and I saw the impact of the Vietnam War on those veterans who came back. And they came back very damaged, not just with physical wounds but a lot of psychological wounds. And that's a very big part of the high unemployment rate that we're dealing with. And we need to be much, much more aggressive. We have a president of the United States who said he is going to cut veterans' benefits, cut our military, at a time when these folks are four, five, six, seven tours, coming back, in and out of jobs, sacrificing everything for this country, and the president of the United States can't cut one penny out of the social welfare system and he wants to cut a trillion dollars out of our military and hit our veterans. That's disgusting."

* Mitt Romney: "In our state we found a way to help our veterans by saying, look, if you're going to come back, particularly if you're in the National Guard, we'll pay for your education, college degree, both the fees and tuition -- we'd give you a full ride. And we also had a plan that said, if you come back and you've been out of work for a year or more, we're going to put a bonus on your back, which, if anyone hires you, that bonus goes to them to pay for your training. So we can encourage that to occur. But let's do it at the state level. Let's not have the federal government continue to extend its tentacles into everything that goes on in this country."

* Newt Gingrich: "The U.S. government did two dramatic things after World War II. They created a GI Bill which enabled literally millions of returning veterans to go to college for the very first time. ? So there was an enormous expansion of opportunity that enabled them to integrate into a new, emerging society. The second thing they did is, they dramatically cut taxes, and the economy took off and grew dramatically, and it absorbed the workforce."

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ac/20120121/pl_ac/10864389_gop_candidates_debate_veteran_aid

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