Presidential candidate and Senator Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday said that if voted in the White House she will work on cutting veteran suicides in half during her first term as part of a sprawling plan to improve their lives.
“Every single one of these deaths is a tragedy that could have been prevented,” Warren said on a webpage outlining the plan. “As President, I will set a goal of cutting veteran suicides in half within my first term — and pursue a suite of concrete policies to make sure we get there.”
According to The Hill, in order to accomplish this, she said that there needs to be additional research into the causes of suicide, focusing on factors that are military-specific, improving access to health care services and annual mental health exams for service members.
In 2017, 6,139 veterans died from suicide, according to the Department of Veteran’s Affairs.
Warren’s plan also called for pay raises for military personnel and prosecuting sexual harassment as a crime under military law, in addition to other proposals.
The senator is among the front-runners in the 2020 Democratic presidential race. Her three brothers all served in the military.
Meanwhile, three new national polls find that former Vice President Joe Biden and Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are leading the pack of Democratic presidential candidates less than 100 days before the Iowa caucuses, the first real test of the 2020 Democratic primary, CNN reported.
Biden is at 28% among Democratic voters and independents who lean Democratic, while Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is at 23% and Sanders, a Vermont independent, is at 17%, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday. In the September iteration of the poll, the former vice president had nearly the same amount of support while Warren was at 18% and Sanders was at 19%. South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is at 9% in the new poll, up from the 4% he had last month.
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