'You’re making it political. Shame on you’: Rep. Slotkin slams GOP backtracking on VA bill

It would seem obvious to most Americans that outlawing or hindering any group of people’s medical rights would be morally wrong. Most Americans would consider it, at the very least, to feel unconstitutional. Virtually all Americans would consider outlawing or hindering any group of military veterans’ medical rights to be arguably the lowest form of spiritual bankruptcy available to the human race.

That is exactly how low the Republican Party has gone. In the GOP’s misshapen plan to gum up all government productivity, they find themselves stumbling over themselves to stop legislation that was once considered very easily bipartisan. In August, Republican senators like Ted Cruz decided to vote against the PACT Act, which was 100% dedicated to health care and benefits for veterans exposed to toxic agents. At that time, the Republican Party whined about “spending” in the bill. A strange load of horse manure even for the GOP at the time. We are approaching the end of September, and the House of Representatives is finally moving to vote on passing the Solid Start Act. This is another veterans program that hopes to provide much-needed outreach to veterans in their first years of transition back to the civilian world. 

One of the main factors that led to the Solid Start pilot program, a bipartisan effort begun during the Trump administration, was the high suicide rates veterans were seeing in their first years out of service. This expansion and codification of the program was introduced by Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Republican Rep. David Joyce of Ohio. It’s a softball piece of legislation to pass. On Wednesday, after going through the committees, the bill was suddenly thrown into a strange place where Republicans said they would not vote for it—if 16 specific words remained in the bill.

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