Tom Coburn, who ran on the platform that there were lesbians in lavatories all over Oklahoma and when asked couldn't explain why that was relevant to the Senate race, turns out to be the one who's been blocking veterans' benefits bills for months. (Via Norwegianity)

One of the Senate’s most vociferous opponents of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has been Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), who called the stimulus “the worst act of generational theft in our nation’s history.” Today, The Marine Corp Times revealed exactly how far Coburn was willing to go to undermine ARRA. It turns out Coburn has been the senator who has placed holds on several veterans benefits bills because he wanted to divert money from unspent ARRA funds on them.

When one of the several groups of veterans' advocates - the American Legion, fer dawg's sake - finally got a meeting with him to find out why he was blocking the bills and plead with him to stop, they got the expected reaction. Basically, "Fuck off".

Steve Robertson, the legislative director for the veterans advocacy group The American Legion, met with Coburn’s staff about the holds on the bills and came away disappointed with their refusal to budge on the issue. “For a lot of family caregivers, delay is costing them their jobs and their savings. It’s having a big impact,” Robertson told the press. “They made it clear that Sen. Coburn sees this as using his rights as a senator to place a hold on a bill…I agree with that, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense to hold up a bill that would do a lot of good things for veterans that has cleared a committee and is ready for a vote.”

(emphasis added)

No, it doesn't make any sense at all...unless you've been paying attention to the votes of Congressional Pubs all through the Bush Years, votes which consistently cut the budget of the VA, of war supplies (when they didn't come from Cheney's Halliburton, which got paid double for everything), of troop transportation (the Pubs made combat troops pay their own way home from the war zone), etc etc etc. There's been a pattern of Republicans voting to short-change the troops for years. There's nothing new about this except the excuse.

So...why do Republicans hate the troops? And why don't the troops know about it?