Category: Congress sucks

You know how Congress and the Pentagon are always telling veterans how we should learn to do with less and pay more for the things that they promised us as a condition of our continued employment? How we should pay more for our healthcare, take lower cost of living pay hikes, how we expect too much and the costs have become “unsustainable”? Well, they had a chance to prove to us how they’re willing to spend less on themselves and they blew it, according to the Washington Times;

Rep. Rich Nugent, Florida Republican, tried to kill the car program, saying the BMWs and Lexuses send a bad signal to constituents, particularly with the economy still sluggish.

[…]

But his proposal was defeated 221-196.

So there you go. Their defense is that they’d still be authorized the same amount of money in the office expense account, they just wouldn’t be able to spend on a free car. Well, they could always give the money back to the taxpayers by just not spending it and let go back into the treasury at the end of the fiscal year, maybe that’s too simple.

Rep. Tom Cole says “At the end of the day I just simply don’t want to micromanage members and how they spend money through this bill.”

Um, I do.

We all know how Chuck Hagel takes on the really tough issues – like the drone wars medal, how he put the kibosh on that as soon as he got into office. Next up is hairstyles in the Army, says Stars & Stripes;

Following an outcry by members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is considering changing hairstyle regulations that affect female African-American servicemembers.

On Tuesday, Hagel sent a letter to lawmakers announcing that, within 30 days, each of the services will review the definitions of authorized and prohibited hairstyles contained in each of their respective policies and revise any language that might be considered offensive.

Caucus members had complained that a recently updated Army regulation governing troops’ hairstyles was racist and unfairly targeted African-American women.

The easier issues, like winning the war against terror, the childish-acting flag officers, the suicide rate among reservists and National Guard soldiers, the Russian invasion of the Crimea…those problems will all solve themselves eventually. But we need needles down on this hair standard thing.

“The use of words like ‘unkempt’ and ‘matted’ when referring to traditional hairstyles worn by women of color are offensive and biased”…all 16 female members of the Congressional Black Caucus wrote in a letter to Hagel

Funny, my hair is unkempt most days and no one ever mistook me for a “woman of color”. We probably need 8-hour orientation classes for everyone, that would be my solution, complete with PowerPoint presentations. Anything we can do to keep Congress from doing their actual jobs is helpful. Right up there with keeping generals’ minds off of fighting those war thingies we have boiling up…um…somewhere or other.

Those same people who voted a scant few months ago to cut COLA increases for service members and military retirees are now considering a 3.3% pay raise for Federal employees who are not members of the uniformed services according to the Washington Post (who have blocked me because I used up my allocation of free articles this month so I found an alternate source)

American Federation of Government Employees National President J. David Cox Sr. today applauded legislation introduced by Reps. Gerry Connolly and Jim Moran of Virginia to provide federal employees with a 3.3 percent pay raise in 2015.

“Federal employees have seen their standard of living deteriorate in recent years due to a three-year pay freeze, unpaid furloughs, and higher retirement contributions for newer workers,” Cox said. “A 3.3 percent pay raise would help federal employees recoup some of that lost income and ensure the government is able to recruit and retain the high caliber workers that taxpayers expect.”

The Obama administration has proposed a 1 percent pay raise for federal employees in 2015, a pitiful increase in light of how much federal employees have sacrificed these past few years. Federal employee wages were frozen for three straight years. New federal employees are paying between four and six times as much for their retirement without getting anything in return. Roughly 750,000 federal employees lost up to a week of pay last year due to sequestration-related furloughs, costing them $1 billion in lost salary.

They vote to reduce pay raises for the troops, but raise what the president asks for in regards to Federal employees? Really? I guess the two Congressmen from Northern Virginia value their federal worker constituents more than their military constituents. But that inebriated sot, Moran is retiring this year, so I guess he’s feathering the bed for his replacement.

Remember last summer, when the Congressional Black Caucus was pushing Sheila Jackson Lee to be the new head of Homeland Security? Aside from her previously disclosed problems with managing staff, one of the main criticisms was that the woman simply was not smart enough for the job.

Considering our serving president, one could have reason to wonder if that’s even a requirement for a department head in a Democrat administration. Whether or not Sheila could have done any more damage to the country than her party’s leader, yesterday she provided additional proof that there are some gaps in her grasp of American history and governance. Standing before the House, Lee offered this:

Maybe I should offer a good thanks to the distinguished members of the majority, the Republicans, my chairman and others, for giving us an opportunity to have a deliberative constitutional discussion that reinforces the sanctity of this nation and how well it is that we have lasted some 400 years, operating under a constitution that clearly defines what is constitutional and what is not[.]

As the folks at Washington Free Beacon point out, she missed the Constitution’s launch by only 173 years.

This is a woman with a degree in political science from Yale and a law degree from Virginia – both degree fields supposedly requiring significant study of American politics and American law, both of which are grounded in that Constitution. Was Sheila snoozing in class?

Oh, well. The un-constitutional law professor now leading us believes we have 57 states, so Sheila’s blooper is no big deal. He thinks we’re bigger; she thinks we’re older.

But Sheila, you see, is a serial offender. She once asked her tour guide at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena if the Mars Rover had been able to photograph the flag Neil Armstrong had planted. Sheila, that was the Moon Neil visited, not Mars.

Then there’s this demonstration of Lee’s grasp of geopolitics. Once again, standing on the House floor back in 2010:

I stand here asking us to do what we did not in do in Vietnam, was to recognize the valiant and outstanding service of our men and women, and to understand that victory had been achieved. Today, we have two Vietnams, side by side, North and South, exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing, but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam, but they are living side by side.

Four decades after North Vietnam rolled over the South and created a single Vietnam, a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee thinks the South still exists, or coexists, side by side with the North. Sheesh!

This woman is out-dumbed only by her fellow CBC member, Hank Johnson, who expressed his fear to an admiral testifying before a congressional committee about the consequences of moving several thousand Marines to Guam – to wit, that so many additional personnel might cause that island to “tip over and capsize.” I kid you not.

And these people are our duly elected leaders?

Crossposted at American Thinker

A Democrat sponsored bill failed in the Senate when 41 Republicans voted against it after the Democrats voted down a bill for more sanctions against Iran. The Democrat bill would have vastly expanded spending for veterans on things like treatment for veterans with no service-connected injuries and a taxpayer-funded gym membership for overweight veterans who live more than 15 minutes from a VA gym. From the Associated Press;

Republicans criticized how most of Sanders’ bill was paid for — with unspent money from the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and the winding down of American military involvement in Afghanistan. The GOP says those are not real savings because no one expected those dollars to be spent as those wars ended.

Republicans also objected to provisions making more veterans without service-connected injuries eligible for treatment at Department of Veterans Affairs facilities. They said that would swamp an already overburdened system.

The vote sidetracking the bill was 56-41, with supporters falling four votes short of the 60 they needed to prevail. Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Dean Heller of Nevada were the only Republicans voting to keep the legislation alive and the only lawmakers crossing party lines on the vote.

Of course, Democrats leaped at the opportunity to smear Republicans for their vote by running ads against at least one Senator (Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell). Stolen Valor executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and founder of OpTruth, Paul Rieckhoff also couldn’t wait to weigh in;

“Veterans don’t have time for this nonsense and veterans are tired of being used as political chew toys,” said Paul Rieckhoff, founder and CEO of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which supported the legislation.

Look, veterans are being chastised across the country for not accepting the things that take money from our pockets, like “paltry” cuts to our cost of living allowances, and “insignificant” hikes to our healthcare costs (while the Pentagon raids our $770 million surplus), so why are Senators trying to pay for gym memberships? Why do they want to push veterans who don’t have service-connected issues into the already over-burdened VA medical care? If everyone is trying to cut spending, we certainly don’t want to be seen as greedy beggars getting free gym memberships.

And, Rieckhoff, you’re one to talk about veterans as “political chew toys”.