Washington, D.C.--In a letter sent today to Rep. Bob Stump, Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs, Sixth District Congressman Frank Lucas requested that the Committee hold an oversight hearing into the alleged abuses by the Clinton administration in giving burial plots at Arlington National Cemetery and other national veterans cemeteries to non-veteran donors or political supporters.

Please see the attached letter from Representative Frank Lucas to the Chairman.

"The overcrowding at Arlington is such that most veterans, even some with exemplary military experience, are denied burial," Lucas stated in the letter. "It would be an affront to our veterans that such an honor could be given, for purely political considerations, to an individual who never enlisted to protect the freedoms that we cherish."

Lucas sent this letter in the wake of recent news accounts alleging that questionable waivers have been made in recent years by the Clinton Administration. The Army issued a list of the 61 requests for exceptions to the burial policy at Arlington National Cemetery that were approved by the Clinton Administration from 1994 to 1997.