Veterans Day – A Tale of Two Parties

Today was Veterans Day, enshrined 85 years ago as a national holiday to honor U.S. veterans of the armed services and those killed in the country’s wars. Just as the United States has two major political parties, it has two ways of commemorating this annual event.

Democrats:

The Biden administration made all of the living 119,500 World War II veterans eligible for no-cost VA healthcare and nursing home services. Family members of veterans serving at Camp Lejeune are also covered for the cost of Parkinson’s care; as many as one million people at the Navy base could have been sickened by industrial solvents in contaminated groundwater from dumps by the government and an off-base dry cleaner.

In another announcement, a new graduate medical education program will fund salaries of 100 doctors, expanding healthcare in historically underserved communities along with an advertising campaign to reach veterans not using VA. The Democratic administration created a Veteran Scam and Fraud Evasion task force after 93,000 claims were submitted last year. In addition to education, the directive designates the Federal Trade Commission to coordinate these reports.

The government will also provide community-based organizations with $105 million in grants for programs in suicide and $1 billion to fund assistance for homeless veterans. Increased healthcare benefits to veterans include $163 billion in 2023 to help more than 6 million veterans and survivors while the government processes nearly 2 million disability claims.

Republicans:

On the other side of honoring Veterans Day, Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson sent the House home for the second long weekend since he assumed the position three weeks ago. Johnson reportedly needed the three-day weekend to speak to the misnamed Worldwide Freedom Initiative (WFI)—in Paris—although his spokesman said he didn’t attend. He was scheduled to share the podium with Éric Zemmour, failed neofascist Presidential candidate (7 percent of the vote), another far-right failed candidate Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, and well-known Holocaust denier Florian Philippot. Johnson did deliver the keynote speech at the group’s launch last summer on the 4^th of July. Other attendees from the U.S. include Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD) and her paramour/former campaign manager for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT), Corey Lewandowski. A spokeswoman for the far-right Moms for Liberty (M4) will be speaking.

Shortly after noon on Saturday, Johnson told Republicans they would be voting on his two-step government funding stopgap bill next Tuesday after GOP’s mandatory 72-hour waiting period. This specific idea to postpone a government shutdown on Friday came from the Freedom Caucus. Johnson likely thinks he can batter the “moderate” Republicans into submission as he did to get the unanimous GOP vote to become Speaker. Even if he manages this unlikely step, the Senate is more of a problem. According to Johnson, some funding runs out on January 19 and the remainder on February 2, two fiscal cliffs instead of one.

The first deadline is for government programs and agencies covered by regular appropriation bills: agriculture, rural development, and Food and Drug Administration; energy and water development; military construction and Veterans Affairs; and Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development. Funding for all others would expire on February 2. The bill would extend the Farm Bill’s provisions until September 30, 2024, the expiration of the budget that Congress should be developing, adding a one-year extension for the bill that passed in 2018. The CR has no budget cuts or additional major conservative policy riders in opposition to Republicans wanting to tie their beliefs to the bill.

Johnson said his plan puts “House Republicans in the best position to fight for conservative victories.” He wants to avoid “massive, loaded up spending bills introduced right before the Christmas recess.” Missing is everything from GOP wish lists such as restrict border control, IRS defunding, and Israel aid as well as assistance for Ukraine.

Although the Freedom Caucus thought up and supported the approach, conservative Chip Roy (R-TX) already posted his opposition to Johnson’s bill, and Johnson can afford to lose only four GOP votes for the bill’s passage. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX), House Budget Committee chair, told reporters that the staggered plan was “politically DOA,” because it did not have Democratic support although conservative Republicans want a majority vote from their own party. 

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee chair and third in line to be president as Senate pro tempore, called the staggered funding plan “the craziest, stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.”White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gave the Biden response:

“This proposal is just a recipe for more Republican chaos and more shutdowns—full stop. With just days left before an Extreme Republican Shutdown—and after shutting down Congress for three weeks after they ousted their own leader—House Republicans are wasting precious time with an unserious proposal that has been panned by members of both parties.

“An Extreme Republican Shutdown would put critical national security and domestic priorities at risk, including by forcing service members to work without pay. This comes just days after House Republicans were forced to pull two of their own extreme appropriations bills from the floor—further deepening their dysfunction.”

The only time the “laddered approach” came over 30 years ago when pro-Israel congressional members wanted to give a loan of $10 billion to Israel, and George H.W. Bush threatened to veto the fiscal 1992 Foreign Operations bill if that were an amendment. He was concerned that Israelis would build settlements in disputed territory—which they consistently have for the past three decades—and wished to wait for peace talks in Madrid. Congress then agreed to delay the deadline for only that bill through March while talks were ongoing. The gambit failed, and Congress enacted a CR covering foreign aid spending with September 30, 1992, the end of the fiscal year, as the deadline. Bush finally agreed, and the loan was put into the final fiscal 1993 Foreign Operations bill.

While the House members went home, a bipartisan group of senators worked throughout the weekend for a workable deal on asylum policy changes in processing migrants to reduce crossings on the southern border. The compromise is intended to be part of Biden’s national security funding package to also include aid to Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.

More revelations about Johnson:

The Speaker is part of the movement to rewrite Constitution to force the Tea Party vision onto government. Goals include elimination of regulatory agencies such as the FDA and CDC, ability to borrow money, federal law for states.

Outside Johnson’s office hangs the flag of the far-right New Apostolic Reformation, a group determined to turn the U.S. into a religious nation. White with an evergreen tree in the center, it is emblazoned with the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven.” Once a naval flag for the colony of Massachusetts, it is now a symbol of aggressive Christian nationalism warfare.  

Johnson says the Bible—not the Constitution—is his worldview, but he trusts David Barton to translate it for him. For almost four decades, revisionist historian Barton has led people in the lie that separation between church and state is a myth. Gloating about Johnson’s election as Speaker, Barton says, “We have some tools at our disposal now (that) we haven’t had in a long time,” Barton added. Recently, Johnson spoke to Barton’s group Wallbuilders, praising Barton and his “profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do.”

Barton lies about Founding Fathers being “orthodox, evangelical” Christians: they were deists. He claims that the First Amendment’s use of the word religion is a stand-in for “Christian denomination” and was never intended to represent the promotion of “a pluralism of other religions.” All society’s ills from school shootings to divorce and LGBTQ+ people come from abandoning Judeo-Christian virtues in his view of Christianity, according to Barton, and the lack of cure for AIDS was God’s vengeance for homosexuality. His 2012 book The Jefferson Lies led to Christian academics writing a book to debunk all his inaccuracies and was pulled by its Christian publisher because “the basic truths just were not there.” Barton’s beliefs are part of recent Supreme Court rulings embedding Christianity into politics, and he was instrumental in trying to overturn the 2020 election with the brief that Johnson coerced 126 House Republicans to sign, supporting Texas AG Ken Paxton’s lawsuit thrown out of the Supreme Court.  

As an extremist evangelical, Johnson subscribes to the view that they must convert Jews to fundamentalist Christianity to avoid eternal damnation.

Remarkable about the Speaker’s “leadership” is the lack of order from the magnitude of shouting and insults now prevalent on the chamber’s floor.  

Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) honored veterans on November 9, Alabama’s Military Day, by denying all 364 nominated military appointments. He had said he would allow some of them to be considered individually, but he rejected all of them when Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) read their individual names on the Senate floor. After Tuberville tried to blame Democrats for forcing him to block the promotions, Kaine pointed out that Tuberville didn’t even try to argue for his policy changes on the Senate floor. At one point, Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), while facilitating part of the reading of names, broke into laughter. Tuberville refused to admit that he was punishing people who had no responsibility for the policy he protested.

The day before his performance with the military nominations, Al Weaver, journalist for The Hill, posted an exchange he had with Tuberville about the overwhelming rejection of anti-abortion positions on November 7, 2023. Asked for his reaction, Tuberville said, “I don’t keep up with that,” adding that he did read about the “big game” between Auburn University, where he coached football team, and the University of Arkansas.

Pence May Be Worse Than Trump, Can’t Defend Him

Democratic Tim Kaine and GOP Mike Pence, vice-presidential candidates, just squared off in the only VP debate of 2016, and the GOP blogged that Pence won—hours before the debate began. The blog soon disappeared, but it does leave all their other opinions open to question. [Photograph: Andrew Gombert/AFP/Getty Images]

Both candidates have been in Congress and both have been elected to governor, but their future—if they don’t get elected—may follow a different path. Kaine would go back to the Senate if Trump succeeds. Pence jumped at the offer to be Trump’s running mate because he was unlikely to be re-elected for another gubernatorial term in Indiana. If he isn’t elected, Pence would be looking for another job—perhaps back to the U.S. House of Representatives. Reports from closed door meetings showed that Pence may not get a warm greeting from representatives because of Trump’s attitude toward women.

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) said that his daughter had told him that “Trump hates women,” and Pence denied it, claiming that he was improving with women. In a private meeting with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), Pence was pressed on his reluctance to denounce former KKK leader David Duke and the Alt-Right movement. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) rebuked Pence and called Russian president Vladimir V. Putin “a thug and a butcher,” referring to Trump’s acceptance of the dictator to be unacceptable.

Trump is well known for his sexist attitude toward women, but Pence has been in a position to make life much worse for women:

• Pence repeatedly voted for a law to criminalize abortion with no exception for a woman’s health and puts doctors into prison for up to two years.
• Pence repeatedly cosponsored legislation to not only make abortion illegal in almost all cases but also ban common forms of contraception, stem-cell research, and in vitro fertilization.
• Pence repeatedly voted to allow hospitals to refuse to provide emergency abortion care, even when a woman’s life is in danger.
• Pence signed a bill to force women to carry non-viable pregnancies to term.
• Pence’s Department of Health gave a $3.5 million contract to a “pregnancy crisis center” that lies to pregnant women about their options.
• Pence signed every anti-abortion bill, including one mandating funerals for aborted or miscarried fetuses. A judge overturned that law as unconstitutional.
• Pence forced a Planned Parenthood clinic to close in Scott County which led to a huge outbreak of HIV.

In an argument supporting a state law against abortion, Pence claimed that women might get voluntarily raped hoping to get pregnant and avoid work:

“And it gets worse – when you get an abortion, you get several days off of work and whatnot to recover. And there are a lot of crazy people out there. What if women would go out and get raped on purpose just so they could get off work? I mean, Indiana’s economy is struggling as it is, and having thousands of women absent from their jobs would be horrific for the state, I’m telling you. I made the right call and that will be confirmed in the long run.”

Pence is also anti-worker:

• Pence worked to keep Indiana a “right to work” state by forcing unions to provide grievance and bargaining services to non-members free of charge. Although two judges ruled the law unconstitutional, the state Supreme Court upheld Pence’s law.
• Pence opposes increasing the minimum wage above $7.25 and signed a bill keeping local governments from raising this amount.
• Pence signed a law repealing the state’s common construction wage, meaning that local boards cannot allocate wages for publicly-funded construction projects.
• Pence also supports the Trans-Pacific Partnership because he thinks that his state would “enjoy increased market access and fairly compete on the world stage.” Unions—and Donald Trump—oppose TPP because it hurts manufacturing jobs.

Pence also opposes LGBT rights by signing a “right-to-discriminate” bill against LGBT people fighting the right of gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. More Pence positions that make Trump proud.

The problem with running for an important office is that past peccadilloes sometimes come back to haunt a candidate. In 1990, Mike Pence, like Marco Rubio, used campaign funds to pay for personal items, in Pence’s case the mortgage on his house, his personal credit card bill, groceries, golf tournament fees, and car payments for his wife. Because it was not illegal, the FEC created rules preventing the use of campaign funds for personal needs. Pence lost his race for the House by 19 points. This fact needs to be pointed out when Pence falsely complains about Hillary Clinton’s expenditures.

Pence may get another black eye from his refusal to pardon an innocent man. A man convicted for an armed robbery served ten years before DNA indicated another man and eyewitnesses recanted their testimony. The new prosecutor in a retrial offered a plea deal for an immediate release, leaving the convicted man no choice but to admit to a crime he didn’t commit in other to keep his family from becoming homeless. Pence’s argument against pardoning the man is that no governor has ever pardoned an innocent man: he obviously knows the man is innocent and won’t pardon him. The prosecutor who got the plea agreement is running for Attorney General of Indiana as a Republican, and a pardon would hurt his campaign.

In the coming week, Pence may also suffer with everyone except far-right voters after his losing a court case. A panel of three conservative judges from the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Pence cannot discriminate against Syrian refugees by withholding funding from refugee resettlement organizations promised aid by federal law. Judge Richard Posner, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said that Pence’s unfounded “fear of terrorist infiltration” is not a rationale for discrimination. He added that federal law forbids restricting settlement funding on the basis of national origin and compared it to forbidding black people to come to Indiana because Pence might be afraid of them. As an illustration of how conservative this panel was, another member of the unanimous panel, Diane Sykes, is on Trump’s short list for Supreme Court candidates.

People who watched tonight’s debate saw Kaine attacking Pence and frequently interrupting him. Pence stayed unflappable while making faces as Kaine delivered fact after fact of Trump’s egregious statements. The debate itself will probably be soon forgotten, but Kaine’s statements about Trump will most likely be frequently televised along with Pence’s facial expressions and his frequent shaking his head. For example, Pence claimed that he didn’t call Putin a “strong leader,” but video shows did exactly that. Kaine made points asking about Trump’s tax returns, his praise for Putin, his negative comments about women, and his refusal to apologize.

As Kaine pointed out, Pence couldn’t defend Trump—he could only pivot away from him most of the time. One of Pence’s mistakes was to accuse Hillary Clinton of taking money from the Clinton Foundation because Kaine took the opening to list the ways that Pence had abused the Trump Foundation. Another mistake was to blame Clinton for the Russian aggression in Ukraine because it led to the discussion of Trump’s support of Russia.

In one sense, tonight’s debate may be a prelude to the presidential campaign on October 9. Watch next Sunday for the complaint from Trump that Clinton has released an “avalanche of insults.”  If so, this accusation will come from the man who tweeted his own “avalanche of insults” tonight. Otherwise it was pretty much a non-event.

Bottom line: Confronted by Trump’s statements, Pence said that the candidate didn’t say things that he did, avoided the topic, or looked away.