The real VA scandal: GOP filibustered the VA bill in February

The real Veterans Administration scandal is the failure of Congress to provide adequate funding to the VA, and to pay salaries commensurate to the private sector to medical staff at VA facilities.

This happened just this past February: Expanded veterans benefits bill fails over GOP’s budget-busting objections:

Democrats’ plans to expand education and health benefits for veterans died in the Senate on Thursday after Republicans blocked the bill for not having a funding source and thus busting the budget all sides agreed to just two months ago.

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“I don’t know why we have a Congress, why we pass laws that say we’re only going to spend so much money and then we waltz in a few weeks later and spend billions more than we agreed to and, oh, we’ll just waive the budget we just passed,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who led the Republican resistance.

Two Republicans (Sens. Dean Heller of Nevada and Jerry Moran of Kansas) did vote with 54 Democrats, but that left them still four votes shy of the 60 needed to [break the GOP filibuster].

The 367-page bill would have expanded education benefits for survivors and new veterans, worked to reduce the Veterans Affairs claims backlog and opened VA care to more veterans.

That’s right, Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake filibustered the Veterans Administration bill back in February.

Republicans also filibustered the bill because they wanted to add an unrelated amendment for Iran sanctions to the bill to undermine and derail  the current negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. Neocon war mongers like Sen. John McCain want to get their war on with Iran. This would only guarantee more American casualties and overwhelm the VA further.

The VA has had problems dating back to the Kennedy administration and the early days of the Vietnam War. Who Really Broke Veterans Affairs? – NationalJournal.com.

Senator McCain has been in Congress for the past 30 years, but he has done nothing to address these problems. The man is an abject failure and has no credibility on this issue.

Never forget that John McCain was the patron of Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, and an advocate for the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq. The Cover-ups of John McCain – WMD Intelligence Failures. If John McCain had been elected in 2008, American troops would still be fighting and dying in Iraq.

The man has blood on his hands, and bears responsibility for the crush of new veterans from the war in Iraq in need of VA care. Yet he filibustered the VA bill in February. Now he pontificates that others are not doing enough for our veterans at the VA. Well fuck you John McCain!