VETERANS: With unemployment rates high among veterans, the two parties are struggling to conciliate and find a solution.
By Kayla Chang, Copy Editor
Back in September, Senate Republicans used a procedural vote to effectively kill the Veterans Jobs Corp Act, which would have created new job-training programs to assist potentially 20,000 unemployed veterans. Republican Senator Tom Coburn led the gallant attack against this bill that would help veterans apply their military training to earn civilian occupational licenses and find work, presumably to make a bigger point about honor and sacrifice than the veterans did. Makes sense.
Well, Republicans argued that the bill, which would have used $1 billion over five years to help military veterans, is not paid for and is therefore fiscally irresponsible given the economic state of the country. But the bill would have covered the costs in part with fees on Medicare providers and suppliers who are delinquent on their tax bills. So in other words, it is paid for. (And it’s a bit silly, really, if you consider how gung-ho the Republicans were about channeling 800 billion dollars, unfunded, into the needless wars that created these veterans in the first place.)
Just admit it, Republicans—you killed the bill because it was a major part of President Obama’s legislative agenda. You saw that Obama-certification label on the front of the box and dropped a lit match into it. As one-sided as that sounds, in this case, I’d say it’s a pretty fair assessment of the situation. Why else would you kill a bill that has bipartisan support and was widely rewritten to include Republican amendments? Eight of the 12 provisions in the bill were Republican-originated ideas. And in case you, like the two gentlemen you threw your votes behind, are lacking in mathematical reasoning, that’s a majority of the bill. You built a ship then sunk it in your own urine.
Yes, we as a country are at fault for the struggle of military veterans, and yes, the issue far transcends political finger-pointing. But I’m tired of guys like Senator Coburn pretending to be some honest broker and voting in lock-step with the rest of the extremists in his party under the guise of fiscal responsibility.
Romney once referred to the troops as party of a “laundry list” in response to a news outlet asking why he didn’t bother praising the troops. He then went on to say that he talked about a “strong military,” which to him is an apt substitute. But it isn’t. One of them speaks to the institution, and the other speaks to the individuals that make up and do the work of the institution—a distinction that Republicans too often have trouble seeing. Sticking dollar bills into the Pentagon’s G-string doesn’t show commitment to the troops.
Speaking of the Pentagon, new Pentagon statistics show that an average of one military suicide occurs each day—the fastest pace in the nation’s decade of war. That means that military deaths from suicide outweigh combat death by a two-to-one ratio. I’m not saying that Republicans don’t realize or care about the atrocities of war, but I am saying that they use language that blots out all nuance and real persons.
The Republican Party has long wrapped itself in a cocoon of vague, feel-good buzzwords and abstract ideals. Strength, valor, liberty—these are apparently values that Republicans have fought hard to preserve in the face of malicious, flag-burning Democrats. But it’s not that simple. You exude strength by having a smaller, more focused military—not by flapping your tail and spreading your feces like a hippo. Conservatives are so fanatic in defense of the affluent corporate military that they tend to overlook the poverty and suffering occasioned by their decisions.
The unemployment rate of Iraq and Afghanistan-era veterans—those who would have most benefited from the bill—is now at 10.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s almost 3 percent higher than the national average. We should be ashamed for having made veterans’ readjustment to civilian life so difficult. The U.S. has spent lives and fortunes in the name of some incoherent mix of business and national interest, using transparent lies to justify imperial overreach. We’ve blurred men and machines together, treating people as an afterthought.
But it’s our duty to do right by those who have fought whenever and however possible. And that means not filibustering innocuous bills that could help them find work and not lobbing gratuitous money into war at their expense. Want to have a real, rational discussion about providing for veterans in a fiscally responsible manner? Great—then stop hiding behind your “Support our troops” bumper sticker.