GOP Blocks Veterans' Jobs Bill

[courseofhistory]

Veterans won’t be getting a new, billion-dollar jobs program, not from this Senate. Republicans on Wednesday afternoon blocked a vote on the Veterans Job Corps Bill after Jeff Sessions of Alabama raised a point of order — he said the bill violated a cap on spending agreed to by Congress last year. The bill’s sponsor, Patty Murray of Washington, said that shouldn’t matter, since the bill’s cost was fully offset by new revenues. She said Mr. Sessions and his party colleagues had been furiously generating excuses to oppose the bill, and were now exploiting a technicality to deny thousands of veterans a shot at getting hired as police officers, firefighters and parks workers, among other things.

...

It would be easier to admire the Republicans’ late-breaking fiscal scrupulosity if their motives — denying the Obama administration any kind of victory this year, whatever the cost to jobless vets — weren’t so transparent. It’s probably useful to remind Republicans like John McCain (a “nay” on the jobs bill) that wounded, jobless and homeless veterans aren’t a fact of nature. They’re a product of the wars that Congress members voted for, the war debt they piled on, and the economy they helped ruin.

“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,” Ms. Murray said in a statement after the vote.

And Romney says he's going to create jobs?

LINK

 

[Stephanie]

don't you love how the Democrats USE our military men and women for the games they play

 

[g5000]

I have not yet heard the other side of this story, but I notice the opinion piece says the jobs bill would help make the vets into government employees (police officers, firefighters and parks workers) instead of training them for private sector jobs.

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[g5000]

The Veterans Opportunity to Work to Hire Heroes Act, signed into law late last year, requires the Labor Department to commission a study on how to translate military skills to civilian equivalents, and to streamline the process by which veterans obtain civilian licenses and certification for their military skills.

Nonetheless, 58 percent of the respondents said they were worried about translating their skills to a business environment, and nearly half were concerned that civilian supervisors who are not veterans do not understand military culture.

Finding a job biggest challenge for veterans, survey finds - The Washington Post