McCains Votes on Vets Issues
John McCain once stood for something honorable. Today he is a sorry shell of the man he used to be. His lack of a vote on Senator Webb’s Expanded G.I. Bill and his comments backing President Bush’s threatened veto, make me wonder how any veteran can consider him to be worthy of being president.
Senator McCain was in California for two, count ‘em T-W-O, fundraisers when he should have been doing his job as a U.S. Senator and been standing by his shipmates to make sure they can get an education. His education was free to him because we taxpayers paid for his four years at the U.S. Naval Academy. Yet he doesn’t want to give any of those benefits to those that already have served. They have a name for people like that – hypocrite.
Here are some more details on Senator McCains dismal record regarding votes on veterans issues by Brian Beutler in The Nation. Deep into the article, I find these tidbits
“John McCain voted against veterans in 2004, ’05, ’06 and ’07,” says Jeffrey David Cox, who spent twenty-two years as a VA nurse
During a March 2005 Senate budget debate, McCain voted to kill an amendment that would have “increase[d] veterans medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006.
In September 2006 McCain voted to table an amendment to a Defense appropriations bill that would have prevented the department from contracting out support services at Walter Reed. The amendment was indeed tabled–by a vote of fifty to forty-eight, the sort of margin a true veterans’ senator might have been able to flip if he really cared about veterans’ healthcare.
McCain voted against an amendment that would have “increase[d] Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes.” Two days after it failed, he voted to kill “an assured stream of funding for veterans’ health care that [would] take into account the annual changes in the veterans’ population and inflation to be paid for by restoring the pre-2001 top rate for income over $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy.” That amendment died quietly, forty-six to fifty-four.
The very good news is that the Webb Bill leaves the Senate on a resounding 75 yeas v. 22 nays. That’s called veto proof.
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