WASHINGTON — With wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing to send injured service members into the veterans system, the Veterans Affairs Department would receive a $12 billion increase to almost $84.2 billion under President Bush's budget proposal for 2008.

VA Secretary James Nicholson said the "landmark" budget would allow the agency to expand the VA's three core missions: "to provide world-class healthcare; broad, fair and timely benefits; and dignified burials in shrine-like settings for our nation's veterans."

The VA budget, part of Bush's $2.9 trillion request for the federal government next year, would include almost $34.2 billion — a $4.9 billion increase — for medical care and research.

About $3 billion would go to mental healthcare, including treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder.

The VA now has about 5.8 million patients, including 263,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

But the VA also wants veterans who are not sick or injured from their service and who do not have low incomes to pay toward their care with enrollment fees of $250 to $750 a year and increased prescription drug co-payments of $15, up from $8.

Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawai'i, chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, said the doubling of co-payments for some veterans making as little as $28,000 a year seems "particularly cruel."

"Why are we asking veterans to suffer in order to finance a war?" Akaka said. "This administration consistently fails to consider the cost of caring for veterans as part of the cost of war."

While commending the spending level in the overall budget proposal, some veterans' advocates and others criticized the VA's renewed efforts to charge enrollment fees and higher drug co-payments.

Gary Kurpius, who heads the Veterans of Foreign Wars, said he was "very pleased" with the overall budget request but "adamantly opposed" to the fee and co-payment increase.

"Veterans should not have to pay for healthcare they earned," said Kurpius, a Vietnam veteran from Anchorage, Alaska.

The budget request also includes $44.8 billion, up from about $39 billion last year, for benefits such as pensions, disability compensation, education, housing, insurance, and vocational rehabilitation and employment programs.

VA cemeteries also would be expanded with $192 million to build six new national cemeteries, and $32 million in grants for new state veterans cemeteries.

Reach Dennis Camire at dcamire@gns.gannett.com.