Action Alert: Call your senators and tell them to vote for Sen. Bernie Sander’s VA bill

Earlier this week I reminded you about The real VA scandal: GOP filibustered the VA bill in February. That’s right, Arizona’s senators Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber filibustered the VA bill because they wanted an amendment that would have undermined current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, because Neocon war monger John McCain wants to get his war on with Iran. Also, because it “costs too much” and “adds to the debt.”

Congress should have thought of that before it created a boatload of veterans in need of health care because of the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq that George W. Bush put on the nation’s credit card creating that debt.

Our veterans were made a promise for their service to their country. Raise taxes on the wealthy who did not serve their country in Iraq and Afghanistan, but who financially profited off the military-industrial complex to pay for veterans health care going forward. This is the price of freedom — who are these Plutocrats to deny those who served in their place?

The Senate is going to get another chance to vote on the VA funding bill next week. Sen. Bernie Sander (D-VT) intends to bring his bill back up for another vote. Will Arizona’s senators Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber once again filibuster the VA bill? Steve Benen writes,  Senate to get a second chance to do right by veterans:

Despite majority support and the backing of major veterans’ organizations, Senate Republicans wouldn’t even allow a vote. A filibuster from the GOP minority killed the bill, insisting Democrats hadn’t done enough to ensure the bill was paid for – because helping veterans matters, but making sure the deficit isn’t slightly larger really matters.

“I hope all the veterans groups have witnessed all the contortions the Republicans have done to defeat this bill,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said at the time. “Shame on Republicans for bringing base politics into a bill to help veterans.”

That was three months ago, and because the Beltway press didn’t much seem to care about the bill, Republicans paid no price for blocking the veterans-aid bill. As Rachel Maddow noted on the show [Thursday] night, however, the GOP minority will have a second bite at the apple.

“As the V.A. wait time scandal continues to unfold, and as Republicans increasingly try to turn it to partisan purposes now, to try to use it as an election issue, these 41 Republican senators who all voted against veterans’ health care just a few weeks ago, they’re about to get a chance to get their money and their mouths more closely aligned than they are right now, because the senator who introduced the veterans bill that the Republicans filibustered in February, Senator Sanders, he says he is going to bring the veterans’ health bill back up again next week. So, all 41 Republican senators who voted to filibuster veterans health care before, oh, too expensive. They’re about to now have another chance to decide if the treatment of veterans is something they actually want to fix, or if instead it’s something that they don’t to fix because they’d rather complain and showboat about it and just hope that their own votes on the subject don’t damn them with the blame.

“The bill drops in the Senate next week. And if we believe our own passion that rhetoric that doing right by veterans is a moral imperative, and a clarion responsibility, then this vote is going to be the kind of vote that people will not only remember, it will be the kind of vote that follows senators around for the rest of their careers, and if there is any justice in the world, through the rest of their lives.”

It’s not altogether clear what Republicans intend to do about it.

If it’s the exact same bill as the one they killed three months ago, how exactly will Republicans explain a change of heart? For that matter, will they even have a change of heart, or will they once again filibuster the legislation?

Three months later, politicians seem a little more eager to stand on the side of veterans [after the VA scandal]. Next week’s vote will be well worth watching.

Call Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake and tell this pair of grandstanding assholes to vote for Bernie Sander’s VA bill, or don’t bother showing their faces in Arizona ever again.