{"id":38903,"date":"2013-12-18T07:03:05","date_gmt":"2013-12-18T12:03:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38903"},"modified":"2013-12-18T07:03:05","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T12:03:05","slug":"senate-gop-fails-to-restore-vet-pension-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38903","title":{"rendered":"Senate GOP fails to restore vet pension cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"

In their final attempt to help the president keep his promise to not balance the budget on the backs of veterans, the Senate Republicans tried to shore up veterans’ pensions last night. However, Democrats were dead set against it, according to Fox News<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Ahead of the final vote, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., tried unsuccessfully to use a parliamentary tactic to force a vote on the amendment, which he wrote to undo the cuts for military retirees.<\/p>\n

A provision in the already House-passed bill would cut retirement benefits for military retirees by $6 billion over 10 years.<\/p>\n

Sessions wanted to instead eliminate an estimated $4.2 billion in annual spending by reining in an IRS credit that illegal immigrants have claimed.<\/p>\n

He and fellow senators argued the bill unfairly sticks veterans and other military retirees with the cost of new spending.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not correct, and it should not happen,\u201d Sessions said on the floor.<\/p>\n

“By blocking my amendment, they voted to cut pensions for wounded warriors,” he said afterwards. “Senators in this chamber have many valid ideas for replacing these pension cuts, including my proposal to close the tax welfare loophole for illegal filers, and all deserved a fair and open hearing. But they were denied.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the Washington Beacon<\/a>, disabled veterans won’t be exempt from the cut in cost-of-living allowance adjustments;<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has been asserted that the controversial change to military retirees\u2019 pensions affects those who are \u2018working-age\u2019 and \u2018still in their working years,\u2019 with the clear suggestion being that these individuals are able to work,\u201d Sessions said in a statement. \u201cThat\u2019s why I was deeply troubled when my staff and I discovered that even individuals who have been wounded and suffered a service-related disability could see their pensions reduced under this plan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is unthinkable that this provision would be included in a deal that spares current civilian workers from the same treatment,\u201d he said. \u201cAn equivalent amount of savings and more can be easily found, and I hope the Senate will move to address the unbalanced treatment of our servicemembers before considering the legislation any further.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gee, who could have predicted that Democrats would want to screw veterans while leaving the welfare queens relatively untouched? Oh, that’s right, I did back in 2008. Of course, the Democrats couldn’t have done it without the support of House Republicans who are more than happy to sell veterans down the river so they can look like they’re willing to compromise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In their final attempt to help the president keep his promise to not balance the budget … Senate GOP fails to restore vet pension cuts<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38903","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress-sucks","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38903","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38903"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38903\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}