A bill that would provide job training for military veterans failed Wednesday thanks to a Republican filibuster.
Supporters of the plan, which President Obama has endorsed, are ripping the right, insisting they’re playing politics to avoid giving Obama any sort of legislative victory before Election Day. The GOP’s opposition to the bill comes not long after the last jobs report showed unemployment among vets at a whopping 11%.
Democrats wrote the bill with a large amount of bipartisan support. In fact, as msnbc’s Rachel Maddow noted, four Republican senators—John Boozman of Arkansas, Mike Johanns of Nebraska, Richard Burr of North Carolina, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania— all wrote parts of the bill, then voted against it.
“They got what they wanted, then they voted no,” said Maddow, adding that she’d hoped the senators would at least show a “minimum willingness to come together on the issue of veterans.”
Former Patrick Murphy, a former Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania—the first Iraq War vet to serve in Congress—called the Republicans’ obstruction a “disgrace.”
“These men and women fight for us overseas,” he said. “The last thing they need to do is come back home and fight to get jobs.”
When contacted by msnbc, several GOP staffers tried to squirm out on a technicality, arguing that their bosses hadn’t voted against vets per se, but merely against a rule that would have needed to be waived for the Senate to vote on the entire bill. Ridiculous, said Murphy. “These guys are looking for excuse after excuse after excuse” to obstruct any progress “because there’s an election six-and-a-half weeks away.” He continued: “It’s blatant partisan politics. And this is why America hates the Senate and hates the Congress.”
Aliyah Shahid Recommended
