VoteVets: Ryan budget "shortchanges veterans horribly"

[pinboy3niner]

With Ryan now officially Romney's choice for GOP VP nominee, today VoteVets is once again sending Jon Soltz's piece from March on the Ryan budget and vets to the group's email lists:

GOP Budget Doesn't Even Say the Word "Veteran"
Jon Soltz
Co-Founder of VoteVets.org, Iraq War Veteran

Posted: 03/21/2012 4:24 pm


Do Republicans care about keeping our promise to veterans?

Looking at the recently released GOP budget, written by Rep. Paul Ryan, it's hard to see how they do. In fact, looking at the nearly 100 page document, the word "veteran" doesn't appear once. Not once.

...


But, without saying the word "veteran," the budget tells us a lot about what they think about veterans. The budget calls for across the board spending freezes and cuts. If enacted, the Ryan GOP budget would cut $11 billion from veterans spending, or 13 percent from what President Obama proposes in his own plan.

...


Additionally, after the backlash against ending Medicare the last time Paul Ryan released a budget, they're at it again. That, too, affects veterans. I was speaking with one veteran in Missouri, who lost both of his legs in Iraq. His care now relies largely on Medicare, as it does for so many veterans who were wounded. In fact, older veterans, even those not wounded, rely on Medicare like any other senior. So, no, I couldn't believe that Paul Ryan and the GOP would again propose ending Medicare.

Yet, here we are. A budget from the GOP that short changes veterans, horribly. And where does that money go? Not to reducing the debt. The debt as a share of GDP would actually increase under the Ryan plan. The money doesn't go towards anything, really. But it does go towards some people. As in $3 trillion in tax giveaways to the richest Americans and corporations. People like Mitt Romney, who already pays a tax rate lower than most of our troops.

...


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-soltz/gop-budget-doesnt-even-sa_b_1370899.html

And Romney made the VP announcement and introduced Ryan with a U.S. battleship as a prop.

[Downwinder]

1. Whenever you get to feeling that you are more

than cannon fodder, they find a way to make the [point.

[longship]

2. Pissing off another demographic?

There's gonna be nobody left but white straight male non-vet Christians. Nobody else will vote for these idiots.

[white cloud]

3. His pick just made Obama

the new FDR.

[Major Hogwash]

6. I think Romney's pick ensures that Obama will be re-elected this fall.

By a margin larger than when Bill Clinton was re-elected in 1996.
We don't have long to see if that is true or not.

[pinboy3niner]

7. And the Obama/Biden campaign is on top of it

They are targeting individual constituencies--including veterans--with info, mailings and ads showing how the Romney/Ryan budget harms that constituency.

Picking Ryan may come to be seen as Romney's biggest blunder of all. Romney had been pretty successful in avoiding specifics (and avoiding being attacked on them)--until his VP choice instantly made the Ryan budget the Romney/Ryan budget.

[Major Hogwash]

10. I wouldn't give Romney's troubles . . to a monkey on a rock!!

Romney should have picked Pawlenty.
Or Portman.
Either one would have been more "mainstream", and seemed more "normal" to the independent voters in this country, people that don't identify themselves as belonging to either the Democratic party or the Republican party.

Plus, neither one of them is as rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth, batshit crazy as Ryan.
Because neither one of them have a long history of worshiping an atheist who hated Democracy, yet wound up on Social Security and Medicare, the way Ayn Rand did.

I didn't know that Ryan came from a wealthy family until this weekend.
Incredible.
Two richy-rich, pampered, spoiled, selfish white kids who grew up and wanted all the power in this country to make the poor even poorer, take away medical aid to the sick, and make the elderly work longer before they can retire.

Unbelievable.

They're worse liars than Bush and Cheney were!
Now they are lying out of their asses when they say that they want to "save Medicare".
Yeah, they want to save Medicare just like the reasons Nixon stayed in Vietnam -- "we have to destroy it, in order to save it".

[Scuba]

4. Great post. Forwarding to all my military friends.

[Major Hogwash]

5. The reason Romney used the U.S.S. Wisconsin as a prop to announce Ryan as his running mate . .

. . is because they are both total loser hypocrites when it comes time to supporting the men and women who serve in the military.
And the veterans who already served.

The only thing those two assklowns give a damn about is investing in the large corporations who have companies that get the big military contracts, so they can get some of that delicious, creamy smooth "free" government hand-out money.

And that's all the MIC wants - "free" government hand-outs.
Every time one of the defense contractors pitches some outlandish new system to the Department of Defense, their lobbyists in Washington wine and dine all of the Congressmen from the districts where those companies are located that will build their new system.

Then those Congressmen reach into the deep, bottomless handy-dandy grab bag of U.S. government goodies and start awarding contracts to those companies, who kick back some of that "free" government money in the form of political donations to those same Congressmen.

What's pathetic is that no one in Congress has the guts to put any type of restrictions on those government hand-outs the MIC gets year in and year out.
President Obama is going to have to cut the Defense Budget by half, twice, over the coming years to bring it back into this planet's atmosphere.
And start focusing on taking care of the veterans who have already served in Bush's Wars.

[WooWooWoo]

8. i wonder what would happen to the GI bill under Ryan's budget?

I'm sure it would be cut somehow.

[pinboy3niner]

9. Imagine no more voc rehab for disabled vets

And amputees having to "pull themelves up by their bootstraps"--even though they have no boots.

The VA consistently ranks as good as, or better than, any health care system in the country. But the GOP chickenhawks are always pushing to destroy it by 'privatizing' it.

The G.I. Bill could easily be another one of their targets.

Fuck that, and fuck them. If they want to see pushback from vets, just let them TRY that shit. Even the old, traditional veterans service orgs that lean Right won't stand for that.

[pinboy3niner]

11. .