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
Republican T. Party
Republicans want to send our kids to war but refuse to either fix them or offer them employment when they come home.?
No wonder it,s losing popularity fast.
One thousand unneeded army bases spread all over the world, with its bowling allies, commissaries, gyms and so on - each like small towns - gobbling up tax dollars and human resources.
They are like a web of geographical extensions of the nation proper that need to be extravagantly maintained while our states and municipal governments are staggering as the economy declines.
Over budget, obsolete weapons systems, vast corruption within the corridors of the Pentagon - all are untouchable.
Although Republicans gain immensely from this cash cow, those who see the benefits of slashing it but fear increased unemployment and the negative (in the short run) effect on the economy, like Obama and the Democrats, seem to prefer at times not to touch the whole subject and adopt Republican austerity stances.
They could then support the private economy in these activities at home.
This is all theoretical though, because the factories have been closed down and jobs outsourced.
Nevertheless a huge standing army, augmented by expensive privatized mercenaries, is not sustainable nor wise foreign policy.
Any country that has homeless vets, should be ashamed of themselves.
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)"
While I agree that veterans have historically tended to vote Republican, I understandthat there is substantial evidence that this trend is not only lessening, but reversing itself.
Actions like those of the Republican Senate can only accellerate that trend if the action becomes generally known for what it is.
"gain priority in hiring at police and fire departments." The veterans already get extra points on the exams that are taken when applying for jobs. I think it is 5% for a veteran and 10% if served in a war which is then added to their final grade. Veterans are highly sought in these jobs due to their discipline and adherance to the chain of command.
There is $1 billion price tag, coming at a time when other government programs were being rolled back. The bill did not conform to the Budget Control Act of 2011, which imposes a zero sum game on all Senate committees for new spending. If any committee wants to add funding for any veterans program, it must strip that money from another veterans program.
It exempted Vietnam-era veterans from consideration for the program.
How about collecting it from tax revenues by ending tax cuts to the most wealthy who can afford it and probably had their kids go to college instead of Iraq!!