By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com 

INDIANAPOLIS – The late Andy Jacobs Jr. had a problem with a certain kind of campaign rhetoric.

“Why do so many candidates have to say, ‘I will fight for you?’” he said to me once when we were shooting the breeze. “Why can’t they say, ‘I will work for you?’ Or, better yet, ‘I will work with you?’”

Andy – I’m going to use his first name because we were friends – was a wise man.

His wisdom was born of experience. In addition to serving in the U.S. House of Representatives for 30 years, he was a decorated veteran, a Marine who had been wounded in the Korean War.

Andy didn’t have a romanticized view of either combat or conflict. He wasn’t a pacifist. He knew there were times to fight and things worth fighting for – primarily when either his country or innocent people were threatened.

But the list of things to go into battle over didn’t extend to most causes of political disputes: tax cuts, program expansions, who claimed which piece of turf, who got which slice of the pie.

He was smart enough to know that a solution to a problem was almost always better than a “victory.”

Solutions to problems don’t have winners.

More important, solutions to problems don’t create losers.

For that reason, solutions don’t foster resentment. They don’t plant the seeds for the next battle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Andy’s words these days.

We now are locked in another campaign season in which political parties and political candidates do everything they can to pit American against American. Republicans and Democrats both are desperate for victories. They want wins.

Not solutions.

I’m not naïve about elections. They are designed to prod people to make choices, to pick party 1 over party 2, to choose candidate A rather than candidate B.

As such, they invite, even encourage, comparisons between the people running for office and where they stand on the issues. Elections are meant to foster debate about who we are, where we stand and where we want to go.

Nor am I blind to the fact that, when it comes to accessing government support, there often are billions of dollars at stake, reason enough for many people to succumb to temptation and forget or ignore their best selves.

Even so, some things should be beyond the pale.

It’s one thing to assert that someone is wrong or mistaken or misguided.

It’s another thing altogether to say that he or she is evil.

There is a world of difference between arguing, in good faith, over the solution to a common problem and asserting that, because a fellow citizen disagrees with one way or another to solve that problem, he or she is less than American.

Or that his or her views don’t merit consideration.

Or respect.

Because your neighbor doesn’t want to see millions of Americans to suffer without healthcare coverage doesn’t mean that he or she hates freedom.

Similarly, because another neighbor believes tax cuts will foster economic growth and create a prosperity that will benefit almost everyone, that doesn’t mean he or she is blind or insensitive to human suffering.

So many of the challenges before us call for collaboration rather than conflict.

Our task isn’t simply to foster economic growth or to extend health care to all Americans but to try to do both.

After all, the preamble to our Constitution doesn’t call for us to “provide for the common defense” or “promote the general welfare” or “ensure domestic tranquility.”

No, it charges us to do all those things.

Our founding document pushes us to solve problems, not indulge in senseless squabbles. The Constitution prompts us to work with, rather than fight against, each other.

What we need now from our leaders are solutions, not winners, losers and a never-ending list of justifications to keep skirmishing.

Andy Jacobs understood that, better than most.

That’s why we sure could use his voice right now.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.

By Dionte Coleman
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – During the 2016 legislative session lawmakers passed a law making it possible for more military families in need to get help from a special state fund.

However, with the 2018 budget session only a few months away, the Veterans Affair Commission has not been able to complete its assignment – draft a new set of regulations for the Military Relief Fund that will comply with the law.

And that has left one lawmaker frustrated.

“As an advocate, as a public servant…the work I’m doing at the General Assembly to create these laws, it’s very frustrating,” state Rep. Karlee Macer, D-Indianapolis, said at a commission meeting Wednesday.

The commission, part of the Indiana Department of Veteran Affairs, hosted a hearing so the public could voice their concerns about the new rule about how the fund’s resources will be distributed to current or former military members in need.

The Military Relief Fund was originally established in 2007 by the IDVA to help the families of deployed or recently deployed Indiana National Guard and Selected Reserves members. The emergency grants were to be used by families for essential needs such as food, housing, utilities, medical services, and transportation.

Under the new rule, the service member must be active or had received an honorable discharge, qualified members may be eligible for the fund if they have at least 12 months of qualifying service, with a portion on active duty and a documented need. The qualified individual or family member can receive up to $2,500 one time from the fund.

Lisa Wilken, a district chair for the American Legion in Indiana, was a part of a working group that submitted recommended rules to the Veterans’ Affair Commission. The recommendations she saw surprised her because they did not take into account suggestions made by the working group.

Wilken cited one example that she said would benefit veteran. She said that a soldier injured in the line of duty after only eight months of service might not be eligible for aid from the fund because he or she does not meet the requirement of one year of service.

Macer said she fears the commission is settling for minor tweaks and adjustments that are being made to the rules.

“So, what I’m hearing is that everything that was here talking about to make these rules right after all this time, what we’re going to have to do is settle for the best we can get with the minor tweaks and I think that, that is a disservice,” Macer said.

But retired Maj. Gen. Erika Steuterman, who chairs the commission, said that the future looks bright for having a better set of rules in place by January.

“I know that our veterans and their families will get the best consideration possible out there in the interim,” she said. “I say that we are a lot closer than we were two and a half years ago.”

FOOTNOTE: Dionte Coleman is a reporter for TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.