It sounded like good news at the time:
Our military families also sacrifice for America. They endure sleepless nights and the daily struggle of providing for children while a loved one is serving far from home. We have a responsibility to provide for them. So I ask you to join me in expanding their access to child care, creating new hiring preferences for military spouses across the federal government, and allowing our troops to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children. (Applause.) Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them. (Applause.)
Then there's the inevitable fine print:
President Bush drew great applause during his State of the Union address last month when he called on Congress to allow U.S. troops to transfer their unused education benefits to family members. "Our military families serve our nation, they inspire our nation, and tonight our nation honors them," he said.
A week later, however, when Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion federal budget to Congress, he included no funding for such an initiative, which government analysts calculate could cost $1 billion to $2 billion annually.
The Carpetbagger Report has the sorry details and, at this point, can we all finally just agree that conservatives hate the troops and want them all dead? Seriously, can we just accept this obvious truism and move on? It would save buckets of time.
3 comments:
Of course they hate them and want them dead. With the military out of the way off fighting pointless wars there will be nobody to stop their coup except John Q Sixpack and the Keyboard Commandos.
Colour me surprised.
I think your conclusion is over the top, but the actions of the Bush administration (and "conservatives" in general) certainly doesn't match their high-flown rhetoric (aka "bullshit"). They may not actually want used and damaged troops — err, I mean "veterans" — to be dead, but they seem quite content to have them wind up being homeless and sleeping under bridges. Otherwise, they're mostly just a costly drain on the system, what with their pesky head injuries, trauma, missing limbs and other disabilities.
No, CC, they do not want the troops dead.
In the alternative, they do not want the troops dead until they can fly them out of Iraq, so they don't have to include their deaths in the numbers.
As far as transferring education benefits or health carte for veterans etc. you're talking about "entitlements." The whole point of the "ownership society" is that you're on your own. You're not "entitled" to shift the cost of your misfortune onto the taxpayer because if you had used a little foresight and purchased the right insurance — on the free market — and otherwise lived a responsible and productive life, you wouldn't have all those problems or need society's help. We cannot balance the budget unless we cut out the entitlements.
Nobody worries about football players or coal miners who get injured on the job. Why should Dear Leader worry about the troops?
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