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Disabled Military Retirees Betrayed By Gutless Republicans
This week, the Senate voted across party lines to pass a bill that would reduce the cost of living adjustment (COLA) for military retirees, including disabled retirees and survivors. The Washington Free Beacon reported that a provision in the Ryan-Murray budget agreement no longer exempts disabled retirees and survivors. The original agreement stated that “This would not affect service members who retired because of disability or injury.” After the bill passed the House, the new summary removed the exemption granted to disabled retirees and survivors. It would be too easy to accuse just one party of this chicanery; for remember, this was a bipartisan effort endorsed by Mr. Obama.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has been desperately trying to prevent the cut in COLA for military retirees by advocating the halting of entitlements and tax refunds for illegal immigrants. Sen. Sessions pointed out to his colleagues that “It’s not correct, and it should not happen.” For the Democrats, vets and spouses are easy targets, like stealing candy from a baby on Christmas morning. Instead of cutting welfare benefits and tax emptions to illegal immigrants and other entitlement abusers, the GOP establishment and Democrats will gladly take the money from the vets and families. They need the money to pay for the new budget while leaving civilian employees’ and other (intentional) deadbeats’ COLAs intact.
Technical Error?
Sen. Murray said “I want to make absolutely sure today that they know that a provision included in this deal that mistakenly included disabled retirees and survivors for changes in the pension growth will be addressed in short order following passage of this bill.” Her only mistake was that the bill wasn’t written in cursive, so the low information voter wouldn’t be able to read it. The omission had to be deliberate. It is too big a blunder to be a “technical error.” All amendments proposed to eliminate cuts were blocked by Democrats. Sen. Murray argued that any attempt to amend the deal was an effort by Republicans to kill the entire bill. The lying Murray knew all along.
Cowards
Republicans of both houses quickly caved in fear of another shutdown. They would rather screw the vets, like the ones who tore down the barriers during the Obama-orchestrated shutdown. The Democrats were only doing what they do best–retaliating against anyone who stands up to them. And the establishment GOP was too ready to join them. Instead of saying no, Congressman Ryan caved to well-known Osama bin Laden supporter Sen. Patty Murray.
News analysts have been debating that either the Republicans are too shell-shocked from negative press, or they may actually agree with the Democrats on cutting military retirement benefits to fund Obamacare for the deadbeats. I tend to think the later; to quote Sen. John McCain, “We cannot have continued increases in costs and benefits forever because of our inability to fund our national security.” This will be the man who will write the bill eliminating medical benefits for retirees, spouses, and VA patients.
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