On behalf of U.S. Sen. (and 2010 candidate) Patty Murry, Democrats are passing around a video today that highlights Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) objecting to a program Murray pitched that would require federally funded veterans’ centers to provide resources to homeless female veterans and homeless male veterans with children.
It’s a cool idea (and an urgent one). As Murray explained: “Female veterans are between two and four times as likely to be homeless than their civilian counterparts—and they have unique needs and often require specialized services.” Murray told an effective anecdote about a woman named Natalie: a mother of two and a navy vet, who ended up homeless after returning from serving her country.
Introducing the bill yesterday, Murray called for unanimous consent. Typically, unanimous consent is a time-saving procedure reserved for technical amendments and noncontroversial votes that allows a picayune motion to pass without all the parliamentary rigamarole (including hearings and committee meetings). The catch is: If one Senator objects, it’s dead in the water.
Here comes the political side of Murray’s move. She is clearly daring the GOP to knock down this heartfelt bill. And, they take the bait. McConnell, citing a letter from his GOP colleague Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), objected.
Shazam! In this Washington, the Democrats pounced and sent out a press release saying Rossi hates homeless veterans becuase he’s going to a fundraiser this week with Republicans like Coburn.
Politics aside, the crux of McConnell’s objection boils down to money. Quoting the Coburn letter, he demands that Murray’s veterans’ bill “be paid for up front, so that the promises it makes to veterans can, in fact, be kept.” (And Rossi’s campaign pointed out that Murray supposedly supports “paygo”—fiscal rules she voted for requiring the Senate to identify the money that’s needed to pay for any federal program they’re putting in the budget.)
However, according to Murray Spokesman Eli Zupnick, Murray’s simple proposal doesn’t come with a price tag—she’s only directing Congress to fund veterans centers come the next budget cycle. “It’s an authorization not an appropriation.” Cute. Although, Zupnick explains: “The longer we wait [to authorize this], the less time the VA will have to prepare.”
When the budgets are considered, “there will have to be an offset,” Zupnick admitted.
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It may be politics, but it's not totally out of the blue. Senator Murray has a great track record on housing and homelessness issues, especially for veterans. She has been a real champion.
Yes, but it's suspect that Sen. Murray's camp stressed the urgency of getting the funding to the vet as their reasoning for going the unanimous consent route, but then said there's no appropriation in this measure (as a rejoinder to the GOP complaint), clarifying that the funding doesn't happen until the next budget.
No, its not suspect unless you buy the Republican argument hook-line and sinker which you apparently did Josh.
Do you have reason to believe that the VA does not in fact need time to prepare to implement this? Did you call up the VA and ask? Or did you just fire off a snarky little “cute” and then framed their response as “admitted” based on your own keen sense of Republican objections?
If you actually did your job as a reporter than I apologize, but if you didn't then you should.
Murray has certainly been a strong voice for vets (normally a Rebublican thing, since we wouldn't need the money if it weren't for un-needed wars).
But I get the feeling that pumping money into VA is part of the “government takeover of healtchcare”, because they are pretty flush right now, and growing. Not the hell-holes of the past.
I think Josh is right saying “Here comes the political side of Murray’s move.” She set them up, and us.
I love Senator Murray. Mitch “Tea Bag” McConnell and Tom Coburn (R-Uranus) are ignoring basic human needs of poor female veterans. Their actions disgust me.
Playing politics indeed. What's more shocking is that a left-leaning site would have the balls to call out the state's senior U.S. Senator. Perhaps Joel Connelly wasn't exactly correct with his “Amen corner” column. P.S. My favorite column in The Stranger was always “counter-intel.”
I'm a female veteran of the war and DAV. I dont think Murray has a great record on protecting vets. She voted FOR a 21% gut of the Dr pay for Military insurance (TriCare) making the insurance useless since no Dr will see a patient without getting enough pay. Plus, when Health Care bill was put together, she voted that TriCare also be exempt from the same rules imposed on private insurance, like being able to keep a child on until 26. Vets and active military can only keep them on until 18. We all know that any female or male with children that are poor enough to be homeless can get welfare and housing, without a new bill. If she was serious about veterans she could have asked that veterans get preference in public housing to get them in faster. Some states have preferences for jobs, housing etc for vets. This would have been a real help, but might have upset all her voters in public housing, so her compassion for vets only goes so far I guess. Besides, the best thing to do for all veterans is to fix the national jobs situation and with the Dems constant taxing and debt, they are going to give us a double-dip recession not jobs. Murray needs to go!