“It’s cruel and it hurts our heroes,” said Rep. Nancy Pelosi in a press conference with veterans groups after the vote. Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Chris Deluzio, a former Navy officer and Iraq war veteran blasted Republicans for betraying vets.
“They’re doing these cuts against the backdrop of holding our economy hostage. They’re telling us, ‘If you don’t want to put the economy into default and wreck this country, well, you have to cut veterans care,’” he said. “It’s the same guys who I see all the time wrapping themselves in the flag, using my fellow veterans and me as props in their ads and on their websites. No more. They should be hearing from all of us.”
The defense Republicans put up against these cuts is that they aren’t real, that the word “veteran” doesn’t appear in the bill. It’s true that no specific cuts are actually spelled out in the bill, but the bill rolls back the budgets and caps the growth of all discretionary spending–again, everything but defense. They pretend like chopping off nearly a quarter of the VA won’t hurt veterans. Or maybe they are just hoping the public won’t notice or care.
Take, for instance, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mike Bost, who said on the House floor, “We’re not cutting veterans’ benefits” [emphasis added]. No, they’re not cutting benefits directly, they’re cutting the VA’s ability to provide those benefits. A neat deflection from the truth of the matter. Democrats, he said, “with no regard for the impact of their words, … continue to speak lies about how House Republicans are cutting veterans’ benefits and it’s false.”
What’s false is the idea that the cuts wouldn’t hurt veterans and their families. When Republicans are reduced to rhetorical games about what is and isn’t a cut, you know they’re losing the argument. For a party that represents a big chunk of rural veterans and likes to wave the flag as much as they do, you’d think these would be the last cuts on the table, not the first.
The past week seems to have packed in a month’s worth of news. Markos and Kerry tackle it all, from Joe Biden’s big announcement to Tucker Carlson’s early retirement from Fox News.
