Category — Veterans

In a press release dated May 22nd, 6th District Congressional candidate Jill Morgenthaler takes her opponent, Peter Roskam, to task, for his consistent failure to support legislation that would benefit Illinois veterans, including his recent no vote on the GI Bill. The release states:

Sixth District Democratic Congressional Candidate Jill Morgenthaler blasted her opponent Peter Roskam for his votes against veterans in the days leading up to Memorial Day. “What does Peter Roskam have against U.S. troops and veterans? Roskam says he supports vets and then repeatedly votes against us. When Roskam ran for Congress he said he was for our troops, but he voted against appropriations for the new GI Bill and against the future of our troops and veterans.”

“Roskam needs to keep his promises to our soldiers. He voted with President George Bush and John McCain and voted against soldiers and veterans. Our troops deserve better treatment. They deserve the healthcare and education that they were promised when they signed up,” said Jill Morgenthaler.

Morgenthaler, a businesswoman and a Colonel who served in the United States Army for thirty years, supports the new GI Bill (Post 911 Veterans Educational Assistance Act) and advocates that Congress should keep its commitment to health care and education benefits for the soldiers who have served our country. “Roskam and his fellow Republicans say they support ours troops and then vote against them. We need well trained soldiers to protect our nation. If we send soldiers in to battle, we need to keep our bargains with them after the battle.”

Amen to that. Roskam has been steadfast in his support of allowing George Bush to continue to send our young men and women in to harms way in Iraq. It’s time he offered them something more than photo ops and flowery statements when they come home. Roskam’s only interest in vets appears to be in using them as props in his re-election campaign. Speaking of which, Roskam was here in Elmhurst over the weekend for the Memorial Day Parade. I did not attend, but I understand from someone who did that Roskam used the event, not as a commemoration of those who have served and died but as a campaign event, replete with a coterie of marchers with Roskam for Congress signs.

Peter Roskam, who this past week signaled his desire that the military occupation of Iraq be prolonged indefinitely, failed to stand up in support of Illinois veterans returning from honorable service in Iraq and Afghanistan. Roskam continues to support hundreds of billions of dollars in appropriations for George Bush’s wars but refuses to vote to for any spending to aid the men and women who have fought so bravely in those wars.

The vote came on Thursday, May 15 in an amendment to the  Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. Peter Roskam voted no. The amendment passed by a margin of 255-166.

The new GI bill, if enacted, will provide veterans with a more substantial package of educational benefits including tutition payments up to the amount of the most expensive public school in the Veteran’s state plus additional funds toward books and housing. It is funded by the veterans themselves, who must buy-in at the beginning of their enlistments and by a tax surcharge of 0.5% on individuals with more than $500,000 and couples with more than $1,000,000 in annual income.

President Bush, who sent these men and women to war,  has vowed to veto the bill if it reaches his desk. John McCain, Peter Roskam’s choice for our next President,  has also refused to support it, despite his ardent support for the military occupation of Iraq, even to the point of keeping our troops there for 100 years.

Residents of the 6th district who believe in taking care of our veterans should let Roskam know of their displeasure with his continuing failure to stand up for vets. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

Peter Roskam is at it again. He’s using a feeble gesture to attempt to convince Illinois veterans he’s on their side, at least long enough to get their votes this fall. Veteran’s should not be fooled.

There’s a “News Item” posted on Roskam’s House web site today announcing that “today reaffirmed his strong commitment to the men and women of our Armed Forces”. How did he do this? By proposing to make it easier for employers who hire veterans to receive tax breaks.

A commendable idea, I guess. But the problem is, for any program to help Veterans (or anyone else for that matter) to earn Roskam’s approval it has to somehow involve tax benefits to business. Any thing else is a non-starter for him. It is tax breaks that motivate Roskam, not the true needs of veterans.

Veterans do need jobs. They also need adequate medical and psychiatric care. They need rehabilitation. They need re-training. They need homes There are as many as 200,000 homeless veterans on any given night).

Roskam had a chance last fall, right around Veterans Day to help veterans begin to meet these needs. He said no. Twice. Too expensive.

Meanwhile, John McCain, who Roskam has endorsed for President, and who has supported Roskam, refuse to back a new GI Bill in the Senate. On his website, he says “America owes its liberty, its prosperity, and its future to our veterans who have dedicated their lives to protecting our great country.” He’s right. So why is it that he and Roskam will spend billions and billions of dollars sending these men and women off to fight and then won’t help when they come back to us wounded, unemployed and homeless? The only interest Roskam and McCain have in veterans is in getting their votes.

What follows is a short film by Robert Greenwald on McCain’s failure to support the new GI Bill:

In an Op-Ed published March 19th on his Congressional web site, entitled “Keeping the Promise“, Peter Roskam blasts his colleagues in the House for having “incomprehensibly cut funding for Helmets to Hardhats by 80 percent, from $5.4 million to $990,000 last year – exemplifying the misplaced priorities for which Washington is infamous.”.

Helmets to Hardhats is a program that attempts to place National Guard, Reserve, and returning active-duty military personnel in union apprenticeships in the construction industry. A needed and useful program it would seem. And I’m sure Roskam is keen on it because it’s cost is negligible and it is liked by his contributors from the construction industry.

I can’t for the life of me find a record of how the funding came to be cut, but I’m sure there is more to the story than Roskam is telling.

In attacking the supposed funding cut, Roskam cites the high unemployment rate for returning vets and preaches that “our nation cannot look the other way while our veterans are in need.”

But Roskam did look the other way, just last fall, and, aligned with George Bush, refused to help veterans in need - twice! Democrats in Congress had proposed a package of aid for returning vets to the tune of several billion dollars. The money would have gone to programs for job training, employment programs, unemployment compensation, mental healthcare, and services for homeless veterans. Roskam voted against the package labeling it as pork. He then voted again to uphold George Bush’s veto of the package. This took place right around Veterans Day.

Roskam complains about his colleagues misplaced priorities but Illinois veterans must understand that they do not number among this man’s priorities. Peter Roskam has demonstrated again and again by his voting record that his only priority is reducing taxes for the wealthiest Americans and serving the interests of a corporate elite. Roskam has quietly supported the efforts of the Bush administration to prolong the military occupation of Iraq at the cost of the lives of thousands of military personnel and he has then refused to fund badly needed programs to help the veterans of that conflict on their return home after honorable service to their country. Peter Roskam is not a friend to veterans.

Got this in an email today:

VoteVets.org PAC is soliciting votes at its website to determine which of seven veterans it has endorsed in 2008 House and Senate races will be given a $5000 contribution. Jill Morgenthaler is one of the seven.

I don’t know much about this organization. These are the goals they define for the PAC on the website:

• Elect Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans to public office – regardless of party. The war in Iraq is the number one issue facing the nation, and these 21^st century patriots are the only ones with personal experience in America’s most recent conflicts. Theirs is a voice desperately needed in the debate.
  • VoteVets.org PAC encourages donations to endorsed candidates through constant and proactive actions that highlight our candidates.
  • VoteVets.org PAC makes the maximum allowable contribution to each of our endorsed candidates.
  • VoteVets.org PAC supports our endorsed candidates in the media.
• Oppose public officials who have failed our troops, Veterans, and nation on matters regarding the war and Veterans’ issues.
  • VoteVets.org PAC exposes the records of the most egregiously incompetent public officials. Whether it is the failure of key Members of Congress to ask the most urgent and difficult questions on the war or those whose votes have hurt our nation’s Veterans, VoteVets.org PAC will hold a spotlight on the record for all Americans to see.
• VoteVets.org PAC is building an organization to fight for Veterans in the future.
  • VoteVets.org PAC continues to enhance its credibility by researching, and disseminating, all government actions that impact our nation’s newest servicemembers and Veterans.
  • VoteVets.org PAC will continue to be a strong advocate for legislation that fully supports our troops, military families and Veterans.

Seems like the voting is a gimmick to collect email addresses and increase their donor pool. But hey, if it might help Jill get a few thousand bucks to use against Roskam, what the hell.

Photo by Tobi Elder, courtesy of U.S. Army

In an op-ed on his Congressional web site dated November 21, Peter Roskam attempts to defend his votes regarding services for veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. The piece of legislation that Roskam refers to in his article is H.R. 2642, FY2008 Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act. As Roskam notes, the bill would have provided, among other items, the following spending for veterans:

• $4.1 billion to improve VA facilities, hospitals and clinics
• $600 million for PTSD and traumatic brain injury research and care
• $2.9 billion for general mental health care and substance abuse treatment
• $480 million for prosthetic research

In addition, the bill would have provided, according to Roskam, $21.4 billion for facilities to house and train active duty military personnel abroad and at home.

The history of the bill is pretty hard to follow at least for an amateur like me, but it at some point became combined into a larger spending bill, as Roskam states. This was H.R. 3043, Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008, which has been referred to in a previous post on this site. 3043 was sent to the President and was vetoed and Congress failed to override that veto. It is not entirely clear to me from the reading I have done whether, the provisions of 2642 were included in that veto but I think not. I think they were pulled out before the bill went to the President.

Roskam asserts his support for the original spending measure but his objection to its incorporation into the latter bill, calling it “a massive spending bill filled with unnecessary pork.”

Ok. So we have Representative Roskam and President Bush saying that they will support funding for these services for veterans, but only on their own terms. And they accuse Democrats of holding up funding by refusing to accede to their wishes for a bill without unrelated earmarks.

I have a problem with this explanation.

It seems that the Republican party has very suddenly found religion on earmarks since the Democrats came into the majority. The last few years under a Republican majority has been a virtual orgy of pork. Take for example the 2005 highway bill which was, according to the Boston Globe, at $286.4 billion, the most expensive piece of public works legislation in U.S. history. It included funding for snowmobile trails in Vermont, horse facilities in Virginia, the National Packard Museum in Ohio, and, notably $231 million for the infamous “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska. This was approved by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bush. And this is just a single example. Federal spending, under President Bush and a Republican Congress, adjusted for inflation grew at a faster rate than under any President since LBJ - increasing an average of 5.3% per year during Bush’s first 6 years in office, all while they were making huge irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthy.

Earmark reform legislation introduced by Senator McCain with bipartisan co-sponsorship died in the Republican dominated 109th Congress. This is not the party of fiscal prudence that Bush and Roskam purport it to be and their arguments to this effect should not be taken seriously. Earmarks were just fine when the Republicans were in charge. Now they are using earmarks as an excuse to obstruct Democratic progress and holding funding for veterans hostage in the process.

If President Bush and Peter Roskam want to maintain the occupation of Iraq, in defiance of the will of the American people, and to maintain the steady stream of veterans returning home with serious physical and mental health problems or to jobs that have disappeared, then they need to provide services for those veterans and they don’t get to dictate the terms.

If Peter Roskam is serious about increasing transparency and controlling earmarks and wants to introduce meaningful legislation to that effect, I’m all for it. In the meantime, he and the President need to stop holding up funding for Veterans.