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."
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Creating jobs is not the public policy goal of government. Creating an environment where men are motivated to produce something of value for their fellows is the goal. The only way society can assess the value of a man's effort is if somebody will voluntarily exchange for equivalent value. The Obama Administration knows that nobody would ever voluntarily buy the s***sandwiches, (high speed rail of wind turbines), they are paying for with the money they borrowed. Paying people not to work or work at non-value producing jobs is as anti-economical as paying people to dig holes and fill them up. GDP is a measure of COST. It is only a vague proxy of economic value produced. Non Constitutionally enumerated transfer payments and government spending do not pass the value assessment test. Therefore they should not be included in GDP when judging the President's economic performance in office. But that is not the worst evil. Saddling the value producing sector with future taxes to pay off the debt demoralizes value producing effort in the future while rewarding other people for no value producing effort. This is called perverse incentives. If 6 Trillion dollars had not been bid away from the private sector 23 million value producing workers could have each been paid 65 thousand dollars per year for 4 years. Obama should not be rewarded for an 8.1% unemployment rated because if the discouraged workers were still in the labor force the unemployment rate would be 11.2%. In the first 3 years of the Reagan Recovery 9.8 million jobs were created. In the first 3 years of the Obama Recovery 2.6 million jobs were created. People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be.... V.I. Lenin, The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913) You had an opportunity to enlighten the foolish victims of Obama's Debt overhang on Economic Growth but you chose instead to deceive.
Creating jobs is not the public policy goal of government. Creating an environment where men are motivated to produce something of value for their fellows is the goal. The only way society can assess the value of a man's effort is if somebody will voluntarily exchange for equivalent value. The Obama Administration knows that nobody would ever voluntarily buy the s***sandwiches, (high speed rail or wind turbines), they are paying for with the money they borrowed. Paying people not to work or work at non-value producing jobs is as anti-economical as paying people to dig holes and fill them up. GDP is a measure of COST. It is only a vague proxy of economic value produced. Non Constitutionally enumerated transfer payments and government spending do not pass the value assessment test. Therefore they should not be included in GDP when judging the President's economic performance in office. But that is not the worst evil. Saddling the value producing sector with future taxes to pay off the debt demoralizes value producing effort in the future while rewarding other people for no value producing effort. This is called perverse incentives. If 6 Trillion dollars had not been bid away from the private sector 23 million value producing workers could have each been paid 65 thousand dollars per year for 4 years. Obama should not be rewarded for an 8.1% unemployment rated because if the discouraged workers were still in the labor force the unemployment rate would be 11.2%. In the first 3 years of the Reagan Recovery 9.8 million jobs were created. In the first 3 years of the Obama Recovery 2.6 million jobs were created. People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be.... V.I. Lenin, The Three Sources and the Three Component Parts of Marxism (1913) You had an opportunity to enlighten the foolish victims of Obama's Debt overhang on Economic Growth but you chose instead to deceive.