Rep. Henry Brown's VA Commentary Is Dodge-and-Confuse

The online Politico ran a piece this week by Rep. Henry Brown (R-S.C.), who has served on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee for 10 years.

Rep. Brown advocates "forward-thinking and creative ideas" for serving our veterans, such as assistance dogs for veterans. Seems reasonable enough.

But one gets very cynical very fast when discussion of the U.S. Dept of Veterans Affairs [(DVA) (VA)] does not begin with some variation of the VA must be freaking kidding me! And with language like "without gratuitously increasing costs."

Total overhaul, complete restructuring, reversal of culture of "delay, deny and hope you die." A reader sees none of this in Rep. Brown's piece, and one wonders if Rep. Brown's piece is more dodge and confuse than advocating real change at the DVA—complete change, replete with some scalps of embedded VA neocons like Renee L. Szybala.

Here's an excerpt from the Politico, make up your mind:

There are more than 23 million U.S. veterans, according to the Veterans Affairs Department. These service members risked their lives to protect our country and defend our freedoms, and the VA’s benefits and services are a grateful nation’s token of appreciation.

It is no secret, however, that the costs of providing for our veterans are rapidly increasing. I am concerned that the $13 trillion national debt and the resulting budgetary pressure may eventually lead to unacceptable cuts in essential veterans services.

As more soldiers return home with mental and physical wounds, the need to improve and expand VA services intensifies every day. While I do not support cutting VA funds, if the VA hopes to effectively care for all veterans, it must find new and more efficient solutions to manage these expected costs.

I have spent my congressional career making sure that we properly care for our veterans’ needs. While expansion of veterans benefits has been my major focus, the continuing modernization of the VA has brought opportunities to develop these services without gratuitously increasing costs. ...

To give our veterans the best possible services, we must continue to encourage creative proposals that maximize services while improving efficiency.

Recently, I heard about a dog-training therapy program in Palo Alto, Calif., in which veterans with post-deployment mental health issues help train assistance dogs for placement with other veterans recovering from combat-related physical disabilities.

After I read news stories of the amazing improvement, even transformation, that occurred when a veteran in need of hope was given a dog in need of training, I introduced the Veterans Dog Training Therapy Act. It will expand the California dog-training program to at least three VA medical centers across the country.

This novel approach to treating one of the war on terror’s signature wounds is a win-win. Veterans confronting mental health battles benefit from the sense of responsibility, normality and stability that the dog-training program provides.

Meanwhile, veterans who are physically disabled benefit from receiving well-trained assistance animals. And the dogs have a good time, too.

No, the program won’t be free. But its effect on veterans’ lives will be significant — and I was pleased to see this legislation pass the House this Congress.

From our nation’s earliest days, through civil strife and wars around the world, we have always considered our obligation to those who served in defense of our liberty and freedom to be a sacred bond.

Rational Budget Talk from Jonathan Chait

Jonathan Chait injects some reality into the national budget debate—applicable to the Wisconsin budget debate.

Chait, one should note, famously wrote of the early Bush-Cheney budgetary statements: "He's [Bush] lying," and that deficits and mounting debt were sure to follow. Chait was right. And he's right again.

From The New Republic:

A few weeks ago, I wrote a column pointing out how strange it is that President Obama is being blamed for huge budget deficits, when the projected deficits we face are entirely due to policies he inherited. In my column, I cited this paper by the Center on Budget and Policy priorities, which found that Obama's budget would reduce the budget by $900 billion over ten years compared with keeping current policies in place.

Yesterday David Leonhardt of the New York Times took up a similar question. Leonhardt looked at the budget from 2009 through 2012, and tried to figure out what had changed in those years since 2001. He found that the business cycle accounted for 37% of the higher red ink. More than half came from legislation signed by President Bush. Seven percent came from Obama's stimulus bill, and only three percent from his regular budget.

It was an admirable and serious article. A good sense of how serious can be seen in the contrast to a Politico story that ran the same day. Politico concerned itself entirely with the perception that Obama is responsible for the new debt without bothering to explore the merits of the perception. It ran quotes alleging as much (GOP Sen. John Cornyn: 'This was not an inherited situation. This was a matter entirely of this administration’s and this Democratic leadership’s making') without pointing out that the allegation is demonstrably false.

This debate such as it is sounds familiar in Wisconsin political circles with the same malarkey emitting from the GOP and its shills.

'Democrat Socialist Party,' Says Official RNC Resolution

Update: Obama, Congressional Leaders Vow Passage of Health Care by June 31, GOP will call it socialist though it will be anything but socialist.

Just read this from Ed Kilgore at the Democratic Strategist:

Like a lot of non-Rush-Limbaugh listeners, when I first heard that a large faction of Republican National Committee members was pushing for a formal resolution calling on GOPers to start referring to the Democratic Party as the 'Democrat Socialist Party,' I thought it was a puerile joke that the adults in the Republican Party would quash.

Apparently not. According to sources speaking to Politico's Roger Simon, the Republican National Committee will approve the resolution at a special meeting of the RNC called for that very purpose.

These guys really are grade-schoolers. You might think after getting the U.S. into this mess that the GOP might offer serious solutions. You would be wrong.

GOP Targets Unions, Specter Wavers

Update: NYT: After Party Switch, a Senator’s Confused Alliances

As Tom Harkin works to move "Sen. Arlen Specter back to the pro-union side on the stalled Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) (The Politico)," Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and the GOP are hitting unions like punching bags.

From Sen. DeMint in Human Events:

... That's why it's vital you sign our petition urging the Congressional leadership to OPPOSE the union bosses' Card Check Forced Unionism Bill -- and the rest of Big Labor's agenda -- IMMEDIATELY.

You see, there's not much time. At the very top of the Congress's agenda is the union bosses' Card Check Forced Unionism Bill. And the Organized Labor czars wouldn't have it any other way. You see, passage of the so-called 'Card Check' Bill is all that stands between the union bosses and total control over hundreds of thousands of America's small businesses . . .

So we have a new Democratic senator who has vowed to use the filibuster to stop labor reform. Let's hope Harkin's outreach precedes dumping Specter, and the filibuster too while we're at it.

Specter's latest position on EFCA: "I’m opposed to giving up the secret ballot or mandatory arbitration as they are set forth in the bill, but I do believe that labor law reform is past overdue." So, Specter's not going to support the fulibuster then? Who knows?

Desperate McCain Becoming Conventional Wisdom

The truism that the Hillary Clinton campaign was over after the Wisconsin primary went unacknowledged by most political bloviators.

So too is the truism that McCain is on the verge of a landslide defeat in November.

The right-leaning Politico is blowing the whistle:

He’s desperate. Let’s stop pretending this race is as close as national polling suggests. The truth is McCain is essentially tied or trailing in every swing state that matters — and too close for comfort in several states, such as Indiana and Montana, that the GOP usually wins pretty easily in presidential races. On top of that, voters seem very inclined to elect Democrats in general this election — and very sick of the Bush years.

McCain could easily lose in an electoral landslide. That is the private view of Democrats and Republicans alike.
- JIM VANDEHEI & JOHN F. HARRIS

Then again, McCain's VP pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, did head Alaska's National Guard for almost two years. So remember this when you hear the blowhards and their "inane manufactured melodrama" on the TV, as Frank Rich advises.

McCain in Fight as Scandal Breaks

Update IV: McCain's Statement Contradicts His Deposition

Update III: TNR: Behind the Bombshell in 'The New York Times.'

Update II: McCain Comments Distort FCC Matter

Update: McCain issues sweeping denial. If McCain is right, and he has specifically denied that he was confronted by aides about the alleged relationship nine years ago, this will be a spectacular failure on the part of the Times and Post that will become a scandal in itself.

McCain camp vows to 'go to war' with NYT reads the lede story in The Politico.

When it's raining, keep your head up; that's the old saying in politics; and, really McCain has no choice but to respond, but I think he is showing too much outrage in his reaction.

From the Post: "The McCain team issued a statement last night decrying 'gutter politics' and saying the story -- which had been reported on the Drudge Report Web site in December -- was a 'a hit and run smear campaign.'"

The 3,022-word Times story is obviously heavily edited and precisely worded.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity. ...

.. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest. ...

There is reason to believe that rightwingers who really do not like McCain are pushing the story:

... Mr. McCain earned the lasting animosity of many conservatives, who argue that his push for fund-raising restrictions trampled free speech, and of many of his Senate colleagues, who bristled that he was preaching to them so soon after his own repentance. In debates, his party’s leaders challenged him to name a single senator he considered corrupt (he refused). ...

Obviously, the Times and the Post have more on this, and the affair, whatever it was, was not a secret.

But McCain's aggressive reaction may provoke many follow-up pieces, not something McCain needs as he stands poised to take the Republican nomination for president.

My advice for a statement would have been: A long time ago , I had an inappropriate relationship. I have ended the relationship, learned from the mistake and moved on.

From The Politico (reporters Jonathan Martin and Michael Calderone):

John McCain’s campaign promised to 'go to war' against the New York Times Wednesday night after the newspaper posted its long-awaited story on McCain's alleged relationship with a telecom lobbyist. Both McCain and the woman in question denied having a romantic relationship.