Fucking GOP

Who were the other Senators who scuttled the bill?

They don't care about people.  They only care about power.  

A surprise deal on health care and environmental policies announced by Senate Democratic leaders Wednesday afternoon produced an unexpected casualty: the comprehensive toxic exposure legislation veterans advocates expected to pass this week.

The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act — better known as the PACT Act — had been up for a procedural vote in the chamber with an expectation of final passage before the end of the week.

The measure is the culmination of years of work by advocates to improve health care and benefits for veterans suffering injuries from burn pit smoke, Agent Orange spraying and other military contaminant exposure.

[...]

The measure passed the Senate by a comfortable 84-14 vote in early June, and by a 342-88 vote in the House two weeks ago with significant Republican support.

But on Wednesday, after technical corrections sent the measure back to the Senate for another procedural vote, 41 Senate Republicans blocked the measure, leaving its future uncertain.

[...]

Eight Senate Republicans — including Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Jerry Moran, R-Kansas — voted for moving ahead with the bill.

  Military Times

And why did those SOBs block the bill?

The legislation, known as the Honoring Our PACT Act (Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act), would expand treatment eligibility, and it has plenty of champions on Capitol Hill. Indeed, it cleared the House yesterday — though it did not pass unanimously.

The final tally was 256 to 174, with 34 Republicans voting with all House Democrats in support of the bill. That means, of course, that 174 GOP lawmakers voted against the legislation — roughly 82 percent of the House Republican conference. That includes every member of the House GOP leadership team, each of whom knew the bill would pass, but opposed it anyway.

[...]

The Washington Post reported:

Republicans who voted in opposition argued that the measure, which has a $300 billion price tag over 10 years, would add too much to the country’s deficit and exacerbate backlogs at VA.

Republican Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa, who’s both a physician and a military veteran, argued, “We are not doing right by our veterans by being fiscally irresponsible in their name.”

In other words, the House GOP minority believes Democrats wrote a bill that’s too generous when it comes to veterans’ care.

  MSNBC

Three of the region’s four U.S. senators decided Wednesday to hold sick veterans hostage to their own anger. It’s appalling and childish. The senators — Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Roger Marshall of Kansas — voted against blocking a filibuster of the PACT Act, a measure designed to provide funding to treat veterans exposed to toxins and burn pits.

[...]

The three senators voted for a virtually identical bill in June, which passed overwhelmingly. Blunt even bragged about it.

[...]

Senate Republicans were furious at a budget deal, announced just moments earlier, between Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Manchin agreed to support a budget bill raising corporate taxes to pay for deficit reduction and climate change mitigation. The tax and budget bill would need a simple majority to pass, not 60 votes. That made Republicans mad.

[...]

The vote to end the filibuster was 55 yes to 42 no (Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer switched his vote to “no” in order to bring the measure back later.) In the Senate, of course, it takes 60 votes to open a can of bean soup, so the bill remains unpassed, while veterans suffer and die.

[...]

In a fit of pique over an unrelated compromise, Senate Republicans punished veterans struggling to breathe.

[...]

Comedian and activist Jon Stewart, who came to Kansas City this summer to urge progress on the PACT proposal, was equally furious. “Not one of these stab vets in the back senators should get to leave for the Summer til this s*** is fixed,” he tweeted. “Not one.”

[...]

Sens. Blunt and Marshall should be disinvited from any Veterans Day service or Memorial Day observance until the PACT Act is signed into law.

Josh Hawley? No need to worry. If he sees an upset veteran approaching, he’ll run the other way.

  Kansas City Star

And it's not just the veterans they're dumping on. They're talking about scuttling other progress.

“I just think the timing could not have been worse and it came totally out of the blue,” [Republican Susan Collins] the Maine senator told HuffPost Thursday about Senate Democrats’ unveiling of their bill to raise taxes on some companies, boost IRS enforcement and spend the resulting money to fund anti-climate change efforts.

[...]

Collins [also] warned that the manner in which that victory was secured, where it appeared Democrats kept Manchin and Schumer’s negotiations under wraps until a separate bipartisan computer chip production incentive bill was passed by the Senate, hurt the effort to gather support among Republicans to bring the gay marriage bill to the floor.

“After we just had worked together successfully on gun safety legislation, on the CHIPs bill, it was a very unfortunate move that destroys the many bipartisan efforts that are under way,” she said.

[...]

The news that West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) had arrived at an agreement broke like a thunderclap over official Washington early Wednesday night. The bill still faces hurdles, including ensuring all Senate Democrats are on board and will be available to vote on it when it comes to the floor. But if Democrats pull it off, it could be a big political victory for the party and the White House.

  HuffPo

We're looking at you, Kyrsten Sinema. I think she's taking the opportunity to steal Manchin's position as the most powerful Senator in Congress. 

Republicans are so mad Mitch McConnell got played.

The key point, Lemire stressed, [...] is that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) got tricked into giving up all his leverage.

[...]

"It doesn't happen often, but Mitch McConnell appears to publicly have been played," said Lemire. "A couple weeks ago Senator Manchin suggested there's no deal for reconciliation, so McConnell gave the okay for the CHIPS bill. House Republicans said they'd support it, too. The White House has given its blessing, now we see McConnell and other Senate Republicans going across to their colleagues in the House, you have to oppose something you previously just a few days ago were for and also have to explain that vote if this bill goes down, seem to be beneficial to China. It's a spiteful action."

  Raw Story

Get rid of the filibuster.  And get rid of the Republicans in Congress.

UPDATE:

UPDATE:  Freely admitted.

UPDATE 8/3: