Veterans coming back from multiple deployments have an unemployment rate 35% higher than the rest of the US population, and every 80 minutes, a veteran commits suicide.
But veterans won’t be getting a new, billion-dollar jobs program, not from this Senate. Republicans on Wednesday afternoon blocked a vote on the Veterans Job Corps Bill – all 40 opponents of the proposal were Republicans.
The Veterans Job Corps Act of 2012 sought to lower unemployment among military veterans, giving grants to federal, state, and local agencies, which in turn would hire veterans – giving priority to those who served on or after 9/11 – to work as first-responders and in conservation jobs at national parks.
The bill was fully paid for, and entirely bipartisan. All proposals asked for by republicans were included in the bill. And yet, all but five Senate Republicans voted to kill it anyway, 48 days before a national election.
In the words of the New York Times, “It makes sense for the 99 percent of Americans to find new ways to pay their debt to the 1 percent who serve in uniform. To most people, Senator Murray’s bill would seem like one decent way to do that. But not if you’re one of those Republicans in Washington who thinks it’s more important in an election year to deny Democrats a success or accomplishment of any kind.”
Of course they did. Vets are just some of those 47% of parasitic freeloaders that Romney and the Republicans just don’t give a shit about.
My contempt for these Rethuglican scumbags is bottomless – screeching at every opportunity how they “support the troops,” then turning around and denying funding over and over for things that would translate into actual support for the men and women who have given so much.