Toomey’s shame
Posted: Friday, May 30, 2014 6:00 am
Bucks County Courier Times
Regarding the May 19 letter from Michelle Christian concerning Sen. Toomey: I am a former Marine who is outraged about Toomey’s appalling lack of support for veterans and about Michelle Christian’s recent misleading letter. I am furious because as a congressman, Toomey voted to send our military to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This added $6 trillion to our national debt and then, as Christian says, Toomey won’t support funding for veterans programs because of that national debt he voted to incur.
How can he have the audacity to vote to go to war, and then vote against every bill that funds the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), as well as the separate veterans’ jobs bill and the veterans’ health and benefits bill to help our warriors when they come home?
Except for the wars themselves, Toomey hasn’t voted a dime for our returning warriors, even to help them find jobs. This, while he voted for over $100 billion for economic assistance and jobs for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Christian was absolutely wrong about the differences between the veterans’ health and benefits bill Toomey voted against, and Toomey’s substitute legislation. Both bills actually had the exact same provision for addressing the VA disability claims backlog, for hiring unemployed veterans, and ensuring in-state tuition was available to certain veterans. Everything was the exact same, except Toomey’s bill did not include the $21 billion to pay for post traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injuries sustained while in combat zones. The bill Toomey voted against actually paid for these items by taking it from our assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan. Furthermore, Toomey’s bill also said no assistance to our own veterans without more sanctions against Iran. What does that have to do with funding prosthetics for the missing limbs of our veterans?
Yes, as Christian points out, Toomey supported the House’s bill that airports can give clothing from lost luggage to homeless veterans. But he didn’t support a penny to house homeless veterans, or for rehabilitation of their missing limbs, or training after being redeployed for years overseas, or even for processing their VA claims, after having voted to spend trillions of dollars on two wars in which American troops fought — for him, for us.
Bill Richart
Holland
