4 GOP Senators kill veterans' jobs bill

Democrats fell two votes short of passing bill that would help unemployed veterans amid accusations GOP played politics.

The bill would have established a $1 billion dollar jobs program designed to put unemployed post 9/11 veterans back to work as firefighters and police officers and in public works projects in a bi-partisan bill whose costs were fully offset according to Democrats and veterans groups.

In spite of that fact, Republicans led by Senators John Boozman (R-Arkansas), Mike Johanns (R-Nebraska), Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) and Pat Toomey (R-Pennsylvania) shot down the bill claiming it violated spending limits agreed to last year in Congress.

According to the Guardian UK, Patty Murray, the chair person of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, accused Republicans of “shocking and shameful” obstructionist politics:

“At a time when one in four young veterans are unemployed, Republicans should have been able, for just this once, to put aside the politics of obstruction and to help these men and women provide for their families.

It’s unbelievable that even after more than a decade of war many Republicans still will not acknowledge that the treatment of our veterans is a cost of war. Today they voted down a fully paid-for bill that included bipartisan ideas to put veterans in jobs that will allow them to serve their communities. Jobs that would have helped provide veterans with the self-esteem that is so critical to their successful transition home.”

In the video below, former Pennsylvania Representative and Iraq War veteran, Patrick Murphy, talks about what kind of men Senators Boozman, Johanns, Burr and Toomey must be to be able to turn their backs on U.S. veterans and kill a bill designed to help them. The bill was not only bi-partisan, but the four of them helped write it.

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4 GOP Senators kill veterans’ jobs bill