McCain Real Veteran Voting Record

I think the facts and the truth on McCain being a hero for veterans in the congress should be loud and clear. Saying you back veterans and voting against veterans in the congress is two different things. John McCain loves to flaunt his POW status but all of his votes in the Senate have been against supporting Veterans.

I borrowed the following from Veterans for Common Sense. I hope they don't mind that I did so. I thank them for actually supporting Veterans!

September 2007: McCain voted against the Webb amendment calling for adequate troop rest between deployments. At the time, nearly 65% of people polled in a CNN poll indicted that "things are going either moderately badly or very badly in Iraq.

July 2007: McCain voted against a plan to drawdown troop levels in Iraq. At the time, an ABC poll found that 63% thought the invasion was not worth it, and a CBS News poll found that 72% of respondents wanted troops out within 2 years.

March 2007: McCain was too busy to vote on a bill that would require the start of a drawdown in troop levels within 120 days with a goal of withdrawing nearly all combat troops within one year. Around this time, an NBC News poll found that 55% of respondents indicated that the US goal of achieving victory in Iraq is not possible. This number has not moved significantly since then.

February 2007: For such a strong supporter of the escalation, McCain didn’t even bother to show up and vote against a resolution condemning it. However, at the time a CNN poll found that only 16% of respondents wanted to send more troops to Iraq (that number has since declined to around 10%), while 60% said that some or all should be withdrawn. This number has since gone up to around 70%.

June 2006: McCain voted against a resolution that Bush start withdrawing troops but with no timeline to do so.

May 2006: McCain voted against an amendment that would provide $20 million to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for health care facilities.

April 2006: McCain was one of only 13 Senators to vote against $430,000,000 for the Department of Veteran Affairs for Medical Services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans.

March 2006: McCain voted against increasing Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes.

March 2004: McCain once again voted for abusive tax loopholes over veterans when he voted against creating a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans' medical care by $1.8 billion by eliminating abusive tax loopholes. Jeez, McCain really loves those tax loopholes for corporations, since he voted for them over our veterans' needs.

October 2003: McCain voted to table an amendment by Senator Dodd that called for an additional $322,000,000 for safety equipment for United States forces in Iraq and to reduce the amount provided for reconstruction in Iraq by $322,000,000.

April 2003: McCain urged other Senate members to table a vote (which never passed) to provide more than $1 billion for National Guard and Reserve equipment in Iraq related to a shortage of helmets, tents, bullet-proof inserts, and tactical vests.

August 2001: McCain voted against increasing the amount available for medical care for veterans by $650,000,000. To his credit, he also voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, which he now supports making permanent, despite the dire financial condition this country is in, and despite the fact that he indicated in 2001 that these tax cuts unfairly benefited the very wealthy at the expense of the middle class.

Can you honestly think that John McCain is for Veterans from any war? Does John McCain love Veterans? I don't doubt that for a minute. If you asked John McCain to fund benefits for disabled veterans you would get a snub and his voting record proves it. John McCain is no friend to veterans. Facts don't lie but keep waving the flag Senator McCain. By all means keep touting that you were a POW. So were other brave military servants before and after you had your imprisonment at the Hanoi Hilton.

Thank you to Veterans for Common Sense for making this post possible.

Papamoka

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McCain Is NOT a GI’s Best Friend

Senator George McCain… I meant to say John McCain, is no longer the die hard friend of the men and woman in the military service to our nation. Lately, it is becoming harder and harder to tell him and George Bush apart so please accept my humble apology for my confusion.

Ask an aged veteran that needs to use the local VA hospital for care and you can pretty much see what the Bush administration really thinks about veteran’s? With all of the funding cuts over the last seven years and the down right cut throat of any veteran that might need long term care were devastated and gnawed to the bone budget wise. Most current veterans leaving military service have a time window that slams shut when it comes to medical benefits. Two years and the veterans leaving service today are screwed. Make no mistake about it, George Bush has no respect or desire to care for our nations military service personnel once discharged with or without injuries. Governor Ed Rendell of PA had it right in this CNN post…

"While we the governors do all we can for our vets and our returning soldiers, our federal government still has the primary responsibility for meeting the needs of our veterans. And that's why I find the president's budget cuts for critical veteran services to be unconscionable."

He maintained that budget cuts include "a $350 million reduction in veterans home funding, which wipes out at least 5,000 veterans' nursing home beds."

(Papamoka Personal Bush/McCain interpretation for those of you that do not speak fluent Republicanese: All you eighty plus year old WWII Veterans in nursing homes need to move your disabled lazy ass to the curb you bunch of freeloaders!)

"If the president's proposed budget cuts are enacted, nearly 60 percent of the 1,600 veterans will lose their daily stipend that allows them to stay in our state's nursing homes, literally forcing them out into the cold."

(Papamoka Personal Bush/McCain interpretation for those of you that do not speak fluent Republicanese: Maybe President Bush and Senator McCain think we should put a rifle in their arthritic eighty year old hands and just air drop them on Baghdad? Wheel chairs and walkers included. Nobody likes a deadbeat right? Works for Haliburton.)

Vet co-payments for prescription drugs were tripled two years ago, Rendell said, and "now the president is proposing to again double those increased co-pays."

(Papamoka Personal Bush/McCain interpretation for those of you that do not speak fluent Republicanese: Are we supposed to support these aging deadbeats forever just because they served in uniform? They were given a spiffy uniform, some free medals for doing some stuff decades ago along with food and shelter while in the military. So how is that relevant to what they have done for us lately?)

"In the midst of a war, when many new men and women will join the legion of veterans, does it really make sense for the president to increase the cost of vets' prescriptions by 100 percent?"

Rendell criticized a proposal calling for a $250 fee "to be paid by every vet wishing to participate in the Veterans Administration health care program. " - CNN

If you still think McCain is our nation’s Veteran’s best friend then you can look at this from the Obsidian Wings…

During a March 2005 Senate budget debate, McCain voted to kill an amendment that would have "increased veterans medical care by $2.8 billion in 2006." That amendment lacked an assured funding stream, but lest one mistake this incident for a maverick's stance against budget-busting, there's more. Just a year later McCain voted against an amendment that would have "increased Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes." Two days after it failed, he voted to kill "an assured stream of funding for veterans' health care that would take into account the annual changes in the veterans' population and inflation to be paid for by restoring the pre-2001 top rate for income over $1 million, closing corporate tax loopholes and delaying tax cuts for the wealthy." That amendment died quietly, forty-six to fifty-four. - Obsidian Wings


John McCain is not a friend of Veteran’s and you can read all the votes he had against legislation over at Donkey O. D. that would have helped veteran’s and active duty people in service to our nation. GI’s don’t have millions to fund a political campaign and George McCain is just another political wing man not caring for his wing man waving the flag and his former military service as an excuse to place himself beyond reproach when it comes to veteran benefits.

It’s getting harder and harder to believe that Senator George McCain… I mean John McCain, is a die hard veteran supporter when most of the legislation presented before the Senate he voted against supporting veteran‘s and enlisted men and woman. Maybe the good old boys over at Haliburton have promised him the keys to the executive wash room if he roles over and plays nice for them.

In the interim, while George McCain… John, is going around the nation dictating that you can not talk about veterans benefits if you never served in uniform it would be interesting to see a list of all the Hawks in the Bush Administration that McCain has joined himself at the hip with. Those brave souls declaring the liars war to be the saving hope for American democracy that also have never worn a uniform. An accusation he used against Senator Barack Obama. We could start with Vice President Cheney and the list grows like the plague from there.

You can click here to see who served and who dodged service and draw your own conclusions.

It would probably be wise advice to Senator George McCain not to be throwing military service in peoples faces when the folks he wants to follow never really served. And yet he is still following the path of Hawks that didn’t serve. His Senate voting record truly does not support vet’s. You can not stump for veteran votes but stab them in the back whenever his supposed Conservative position in politics fit the political day. Either he supports the troops and the long term needs that come up from serving your nation or he does not. The later fits McBush (Dick McCain, George McCain or whoever the hell he has morphed into this week) to a tee!

I'm pretty confident that the only time John Bush... I mean McCain and his bestest friend George Bush only respect veterans when they are in a box and six feet under. Facts don't back up either one of them ever looking out for the troops past or present.

Papamoka