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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Huffington Post Politics
Robert L. Borosage.
President, Institute for America's Future
Senate Republicans Shaft the Vets
The young men and women who serve in our military return from fighting in the longest wars in American history to the worst jobs market in generations. They suffer higher unemployment rates than the general population: over one in ten is officially counted as unemployed -- and that does not include those who have stopped looking for work or are forced to work part-time.
So yesterday, in one final vile act before adjournment for the elections, Senate Republicans used a point of order to block passage of the Veterans Jobs Corps proposal that would have provided a modest $1 billion to hire veterans to tend federal lands or gain priority in hiring at police and fire departments. The bill was crafted with bipartisan support. 58 Senators supported the bill, but Republicans put together the 40 votes needed to block its passage.
Why shaft the very veterans whose service politicians sanctimoniously celebrate at every occasion?
Is it because unemployed veterans are part of Mitt Romney's scorned 47 percent?
Unemployed, they pay no taxes. They may feel they are "entitled" to the health care benefits they are guaranteed. Many take advantage of training and education benefits. Perhaps Republican senators simply didn't want to help these "victims" feel entitled to a job in addition. (Of course, contrary to Mitt's idiotic election strategery, like seniors, these "victims" tend to vote more Republican than Democratic)
Or is it because Senate Republicans remain committed to block any action that will produce jobs in their monomaniacal effort to make Barack Obama a one-term president. In the midst of the worst recession in generations, Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell famously announced at the beginning of the term that "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."
Republicans then launched a scorched earth policy of obstruction, using the filibuster to block everything they could. They worked overtime to weaken the president's initial recovery act, cutting its size and larding it with ineffective tax cuts. Once Republicans took the House, they joined in blocking additional jobs measures, including most recently the president's American Jobs Act, while forcing cuts in spending that cost jobs. And then, of course, they denounce the president for failing to fix the economy.
Or perhaps Senate Republicans are simply fools, not knaves. Conservative Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma explained his vote against putting unemployed veterans to work by arguing that making progress on the nation's debt was the best way to help them in the long-term. "We ought to do nothing now that makes the problem worse for our kids and grandkids," he said. "In the run," as John Maynard Keynes once said, "we are all dead" -- a comment that gains grim meaning as the Defense Department reports that a veteran are killing themselves at the rate of one every 80 minutes
These are the same Republicans who squandered over three trillion dollars on the unfunded "war of choice" in Iraq. And now spending a billion on the veterans who risked their lives in that folly imposes too big a burden on our grandchildren. This is disgraceful politics. Naturally, the two Republican senators in close re-election races -- Scott Brown in Massachusetts and Dean Heller of Nevada -- were given permission to vote for the bill. The rest either are in safe seats or assume that Americans will forget by the time they come up for re-election. They'll salute the troops, march in the parades, celebrate the returning heroes, and call for larding more billions into the Pentagon. But a small jobs programs for veterans in need of work? Not this year, not before the election.
Follow Robert L. Borosage on Twitter: www.twitter.com/borosage |
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Fri Sep 21, 2012 6:17 am |
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untanglingwebs
El Supremo
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Veterans Jobs Bill Bogs Down In Senate
By KEVIN FREKING 09/20/12 12:03 AM ET EDT
WASHINGTON -- Senate Republicans blocked legislation Wednesday that would have established a $1 billion jobs program putting veterans back to work tending to the country's federal lands and bolstering local police and fire departments.
Republicans said the spending authorized in the bill violated limits that Congress agreed to last year. Democrats fell two votes shy of the 60-vote majority needed to waive the objection, forcing the legislation back to committee.
Supporters loosely modeled their proposal after the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps used during the Great Depression to put people to work planting trees, building parks and constructing dams. They said the latest monthly jobs report, showing a nearly 11 percent unemployment rate for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, merited action from Congress.
Democratic lawmakers turned to the legislation shortly before they'll adjourn for the finals weeks of this year's election campaigns. The bill had little chance of passing the House this Congress, but it still allowed senators to appeal to a key voting bloc.
"(With) a need so great as unemployed veterans, this is not the time to draw a technical line on the budget," said Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, the bill's lead sponsor, who faces a competitive re-election battle.
Republicans said the effort to help veterans was noble, but the bill was flawed nevertheless.
Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma said the federal government already has six job-training programs for veterans and there is no way to know how well they are working. He argued that making progress on the country's debt was the best way to help veterans in the long-term.
"We ought to do nothing now that makes the problem worse for our kids and grandkids," Coburn said.
Democratic officials did not have an estimate for how many veterans would be hired as a result of the legislation. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said much would depend upon the number of applicants. She noted that more than 720,000 veterans are unemployed across the nation, including 220,000 veterans who have served since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. She said putting veterans back to work was the cost of war.
"Instead of meeting us halfway, we have been met with resistance. Instead of saying yes to the nearly 1 million unemployed veterans, it seems some on the other side have spent the last week and a half seeking any way to say no," Murray said.
The advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America denounced the vote.
"This bill was smart bipartisan policy that would put veterans back into service for their communities as policemen, firefighters and first responders," the group's founder and chief executive, Paul Rieckhoff, said in statement. "The result of today's vote creates tremendous doubt that this Congress will be able to pass any additional veterans legislation in 2012. Iraq and Afghanistan veterans should not have to wait until 2013 for critical support from Congress."
A handful of Republicans joined with Democrats in voting to waive the objection to the bill: Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Dean Heller of Nevada, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Maine's Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe. Brown and Heller are also in tough re-election contests.
Heller said he was proud to support the bill.
"After everything our veterans have done for us, the least we can do is make sure they are afforded every opportunity to thrive here at home," Heller said.
Also on HuffPost: |
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Fri Sep 21, 2012 6:28 am |
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