Mitt Romney Promises to Vets He Will Work Tirelessly Until the Free Market Gets to Screw them Over.
Jim DeMint Pats Himself on the Back After Fighting Back Against Socialist Selfish Interest Group. Say Thank You, Veterans. Jim DeMint Just Saved You from the Democrats' Trick.
Jim DeMint: Veterans Hiring Bill Is A Democratic 'Trick'
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) distinguished himself Thursday as the only senator to oppose a measure aimed at hiring veterans, calling it a "trick" by the Obama administration and Democrats.
He knew his decision wouldn't be popular, but still cast the lone vote against an amendment to grant employers tax breaks worth up to $9,600 for giving a veteran a job.
"I know what I'm about to discuss won't be very popular. I'll probably be accused of not supporting veterans by the politicians pandering for their votes," DeMint said on the Senate floor Thursday. "But I'm not going to be intimidated to vote for something that may make sense politically but is inherently unfair."
In fact, it did not take long for Democrats to point out DeMint's vote to reporters, in case they missed it.
DeMint argued that passing such a tax break was simply catering to an interest group and predicted little hiring would come from the measure. "Despite the overwhelming evidence that these tax credits do not stimulate hiring for targeted groups, the Obama administration continues to push Congress to pass another tax credit, this time exclusively for veterans," he said. "By using a politically sensitive group the day before Veterans Day, the Democrats are hoping they can trick Republicans into further complicating the tax code."
None of DeMint's Republican colleagues agreed with him. Indeed, they held up the legislation as an example of bipartisanship aimed at addressing the unemployment crisis.
DeMint later voted in favor of the larger bill to which the veterans amendment was added, a measure to delay a 3 percent withholding tax that was supposed to help the federal government crack down on contractor fraud. That bill passed unanimously, 95-to-0.
In another twist in the odd world of Congress, DeMint had been one of a large majority of senators who voted for that 3 percent withholding tax in 2005. Then it had been aimed at federal contractors who failed to pay their taxes; the 3 percent essentially served as collateral to ensure the companies paid up.
But with the economy in the tank, legislators on Thursday deemed it an impediment to hiring.
Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized
Mitt Romney floated an eyebrow-raising suggestion on Veterans Day: privatize veterans' health care.
Speaking with a dozen vets in an occasionally emotional roundtable discussion in South Carolina Friday, the GOP presidential contender sympathized with the service members' difficulties obtaining treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which one vet described as "adversarial."
Romney, who has already proposed privatizing Medicare, suggested that maybe giving wounded warriors an outside option would force VA health bureaucrats to be a little more responsive.
"When you work in the private sector and you have a competitor, you know if I don't treat this customer right, they're going to leave me and go somewhere else, so I'd better treat them right," Romney said. "Whereas if you're the government, they know there's nowhere else you guys can go. You're stuck.
Sometimes you wonder if there would be some way to introduce some private-sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say, you know, that each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to them, and then they can choose whether they want to go in the government system or in a private system with the money that follows them," said Romney. "Like what happens with schools in Florida, where people have a voucher that goes with them. Who knows?"
Though Romney was equivocal about the idea, the Democrat-aligned Protect Your Care was quick to pounce on the suggestion, which could have the effect of diverting cash from the VA.
"It is well-known that Romney wants to take away seniors' Medicare and turn it into a privatized voucher system, but it is unfathomable that on Veterans Day he would even hint at privatizing their VA health care," said Protect Your Care spokesman Eddie Vale. "Although I guess that is the kind of thing they should expect from someone who in the past said his sons also served their country by campaigning for him."
Vale was referring to remarks Romney made in the 2008 campaign, when he defended his five sons' decisions not to enlist in the military by saying they were serving their country by helping to get him elected.
The idea of health care vouchers didn't impress one Marine veteran in the discussion, according to Talking Points Memo.
Auston Thompson, a veteran of the Iraq War and former Marine, told TPM after the session that though the idea of the plan was sound to his fiscally conservative ear, the implementation would likely lead to problems.
"Eventually it would become too much of a nuisance," Thompson said. He doubted a voucher system would cover the benefits like the existing VA system does. "Private health care is already so expensive, you'd need
some kind of health care reform to make it work."
Homeless Veterans More Likely To Die On Streets Than Other Homeless People, Study Says
Homeless veterans are more likely to die on the streets than non-veterans, a new study revealed.
Those who return from serving, to leading the homeless life are 11 percentage points more likely to develop life-threatening diseases than non-veteran homeless people, the 100,000 Homeless Campaign concluded in a study published Tuesday.
The movement, which works to place homeless Americans, surveyed 23,000 homeless people across the country. It found that homeless veterans are typically older than non-veterans and tend to remain homeless for longer periods of time.
"Men and women who risked their lives defending America may be far more likely to die on its streets," the authors concluded.
The authors noted that 21.3 percent of homeless veterans reported an age over 60, compared with 9.4 percent of the non-veteran homeless population. Though this factor doesn't fully account for the disparity in the length of time that veterans remain homeless, or their susceptibility to sickness, older veterans claim that their age often impedes their ability to get their lives back on track.
T.J. Manning, who served in Vietnam, has been living in a Texas homeless shelter for a year and says that President Obama's plan to help employ veterans doesn't cater to servicemen from Manning’s era.
Though Obama's bill aims to help find jobs for the country's 900,000 unemployed veterans, Manning told woai.com that such initiatives are often geared to help those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"When you say a bill for veterans you are intending to seem very inclusive," Manning told the news outlet.
As Obama works to incentivize companies to employ veterans, he's also in the midst of executing his and the VA's plan to end homelessness by 2014. Back in 2009, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced the $3.2 billion collaboration to end veteran homelessness.
The initiative is both preventative and ameliorative, it aims to keep veterans from ever losing their homes and to find residences for those who are living on the streets.
Those who have served this nation as veterans should never find themselves on the streets, living without care and without hope,” Shinseki said.
Jim DeMint: Veterans Hiring Bill Is A Democratic 'Trick'
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) distinguished himself Thursday as the only senator to oppose a measure aimed at hiring veterans, calling it a "trick" by the Obama administration and Democrats.
He knew his decision wouldn't be popular, but still cast the lone vote against an amendment to grant employers tax breaks worth up to $9,600 for giving a veteran a job.
"I know what I'm about to discuss won't be very popular. I'll probably be accused of not supporting veterans by the politicians pandering for their votes," DeMint said on the Senate floor Thursday. "But I'm not going to be intimidated to vote for something that may make sense politically but is inherently unfair."
In fact, it did not take long for Democrats to point out DeMint's vote to reporters, in case they missed it.
DeMint argued that passing such a tax break was simply catering to an interest group and predicted little hiring would come from the measure. "Despite the overwhelming evidence that these tax credits do not stimulate hiring for targeted groups, the Obama administration continues to push Congress to pass another tax credit, this time exclusively for veterans," he said. "By using a politically sensitive group the day before Veterans Day, the Democrats are hoping they can trick Republicans into further complicating the tax code."
None of DeMint's Republican colleagues agreed with him. Indeed, they held up the legislation as an example of bipartisanship aimed at addressing the unemployment crisis.
DeMint later voted in favor of the larger bill to which the veterans amendment was added, a measure to delay a 3 percent withholding tax that was supposed to help the federal government crack down on contractor fraud. That bill passed unanimously, 95-to-0.
In another twist in the odd world of Congress, DeMint had been one of a large majority of senators who voted for that 3 percent withholding tax in 2005. Then it had been aimed at federal contractors who failed to pay their taxes; the 3 percent essentially served as collateral to ensure the companies paid up.
But with the economy in the tank, legislators on Thursday deemed it an impediment to hiring.
Mitt Romney: Maybe Veterans' Health Care Should Be Privatized
Mitt Romney floated an eyebrow-raising suggestion on Veterans Day: privatize veterans' health care.
Speaking with a dozen vets in an occasionally emotional roundtable discussion in South Carolina Friday, the GOP presidential contender sympathized with the service members' difficulties obtaining treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which one vet described as "adversarial."
Romney, who has already proposed privatizing Medicare, suggested that maybe giving wounded warriors an outside option would force VA health bureaucrats to be a little more responsive.
"When you work in the private sector and you have a competitor, you know if I don't treat this customer right, they're going to leave me and go somewhere else, so I'd better treat them right," Romney said. "Whereas if you're the government, they know there's nowhere else you guys can go. You're stuck.
Sometimes you wonder if there would be some way to introduce some private-sector competition, somebody else that could come in and say, you know, that each soldier gets X thousand dollars attributed to them, and then they can choose whether they want to go in the government system or in a private system with the money that follows them," said Romney. "Like what happens with schools in Florida, where people have a voucher that goes with them. Who knows?"
Though Romney was equivocal about the idea, the Democrat-aligned Protect Your Care was quick to pounce on the suggestion, which could have the effect of diverting cash from the VA.
"It is well-known that Romney wants to take away seniors' Medicare and turn it into a privatized voucher system, but it is unfathomable that on Veterans Day he would even hint at privatizing their VA health care," said Protect Your Care spokesman Eddie Vale. "Although I guess that is the kind of thing they should expect from someone who in the past said his sons also served their country by campaigning for him."
Vale was referring to remarks Romney made in the 2008 campaign, when he defended his five sons' decisions not to enlist in the military by saying they were serving their country by helping to get him elected.
The idea of health care vouchers didn't impress one Marine veteran in the discussion, according to Talking Points Memo.
Auston Thompson, a veteran of the Iraq War and former Marine, told TPM after the session that though the idea of the plan was sound to his fiscally conservative ear, the implementation would likely lead to problems.
"Eventually it would become too much of a nuisance," Thompson said. He doubted a voucher system would cover the benefits like the existing VA system does. "Private health care is already so expensive, you'd need
some kind of health care reform to make it work."
Homeless Veterans More Likely To Die On Streets Than Other Homeless People, Study Says
Homeless veterans are more likely to die on the streets than non-veterans, a new study revealed.
Those who return from serving, to leading the homeless life are 11 percentage points more likely to develop life-threatening diseases than non-veteran homeless people, the 100,000 Homeless Campaign concluded in a study published Tuesday.
The movement, which works to place homeless Americans, surveyed 23,000 homeless people across the country. It found that homeless veterans are typically older than non-veterans and tend to remain homeless for longer periods of time.
"Men and women who risked their lives defending America may be far more likely to die on its streets," the authors concluded.
The authors noted that 21.3 percent of homeless veterans reported an age over 60, compared with 9.4 percent of the non-veteran homeless population. Though this factor doesn't fully account for the disparity in the length of time that veterans remain homeless, or their susceptibility to sickness, older veterans claim that their age often impedes their ability to get their lives back on track.
T.J. Manning, who served in Vietnam, has been living in a Texas homeless shelter for a year and says that President Obama's plan to help employ veterans doesn't cater to servicemen from Manning’s era.
Though Obama's bill aims to help find jobs for the country's 900,000 unemployed veterans, Manning told woai.com that such initiatives are often geared to help those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"When you say a bill for veterans you are intending to seem very inclusive," Manning told the news outlet.
As Obama works to incentivize companies to employ veterans, he's also in the midst of executing his and the VA's plan to end homelessness by 2014. Back in 2009, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki announced the $3.2 billion collaboration to end veteran homelessness.
The initiative is both preventative and ameliorative, it aims to keep veterans from ever losing their homes and to find residences for those who are living on the streets.
Those who have served this nation as veterans should never find themselves on the streets, living without care and without hope,” Shinseki said.