Senate Republicans Kill Veterans’ Jobs Bill

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With Virginia being a swing state and the 2nd Virginia Congressional District and the Virginia U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Jim Webb being highly competitive we Virginians are being inundated with political ads - particularly GOP ads talking about creating jobs.  Yet when the rubber meets the road, Congressional Republicans are doing everything they can to kill pro-jib creations bills.  Even bills that would help unemployed military veterans.  One can only hope that those hearing the incessant, dishonest GOP ads are watching the GOP's actions as opposed to the party's disingenuous words and will remember the lies on election day and pull the levers for Democratic candidates.  Think Progress looks at what GOP senators did today to screw over our military veterans.  Here are excerpts:

Senate Republicans prevented a veterans’ jobs bill from coming to a vote today by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP’s budget measure. 

The Veterans Jobs Corps bill — which is part of President Obama’s push to secure jobs for veterans — would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers. 

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the GOP move “a huge disappointment,” adding, “Today, politics won over helping vets.” 

While only five Republicans voted with the Democrats to waive the GOP budget point of order measure, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) led the GOP opposition.

The jobless rate for Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, while steadily declining, is still higher than the national average, yet congressional Republicans remain “resolute in their commitment to deny the Democrats anything that looks like an accomplishment in an election year.” 

In an editorial last weekend referring to today’s vote, the New York Times said, “We’ll know then whether good sense prevailed, or the wheels have come completely off the Congressional machine.” It looks like the Republicans have made sure of the latter. 

As I have noted many times, today's GOP has become as dishonest as the party's Christianist base.  Indeed, if Republicans' lips are moving, the safest bet is to assume that they are lying.