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Even if we put aside the fact that congressional Republicans are using the debt ceiling to threaten Americans with deliberate harm, the GOP’s tactics appear even more offensive when we examine the party’s ransom note. As we’ve discussed, Republicans are demanding that Democrats accept a right-wing plan that would push hundreds of thousands of American out of work, take health care coverage from hundreds of thousands of Americans, and derail the U.S. manufacturing boom.
Just as importantly, the co-called Limit, Save, Grow Act would gut all kinds of critically necessary public investments, affecting everything from veterans care to education, border security to food security, law enforcement to medical research, Head Start to rail inspections, agriculture to air traffic control, infrastructure to national parks.
Republicans don’t quite see it this way. The Hill reported on a Sunday press call in which more than a dozen GOP members pushed back against one specific talking point.
House Republicans are fuming over the Department of Veterans’ Affairs claiming that the GOP’s debt limit and spending cut bill would endanger services and benefits for veterans. ... “They’re shamelessly lying about veterans benefits and politicizing the VA to do so,” House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) said.
The Republicans’ argument is relatively straightforward: Anyone can go through the party’s debt ceiling ransom note, line by line, and they’ll find no specific references to cutting veterans’ benefits. If the provision isn’t explicitly included in the legislation, the argument goes, then it’s obviously unfair to accuse GOP lawmakers of targeting veterans’ care with their bill.
Do Republicans have a point? Actually, no — at least not in a way that makes substantive sense.
GOP lawmakers don’t deny that they’re seeking spending cuts as part of the hostage crisis. On the contrary, it’s largely the reason they created the crisis in the first place.
But as part of the Republicans’ approach, the cuts aren’t specified at all: The party’s bill says it intends to lower discretionary spending to 2022 levels, then cap growth at 1% per year going forward. Between inflation and governing needs, this would necessarily require dramatic cuts.
How dramatic? According to a White House analysis — the data from which has not been seriously contested — if Republicans exclude military spending and social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare, as GOP leaders say they will, it would require at least 22% cuts from everything else, including veterans’ care, to remain within the far-right caps. (Depending on budgetary assumptions, some have pegged that number at 28%.)
Indeed, several organizations that champion veterans’ interests asked Republicans to exclude veterans’ care from their debt ceiling plan. GOP leaders ignored those requests.
And so, here we are. Republicans put together a deliberately vague plan, leveraging the debt ceiling to pursue unspecified cuts, and Democrats are simply filling in the gaps, reminding the public of the great many priorities — including benefits for veterans — that are vulnerable under the GOP’s radical scheme.
By some measures, under the House Republicans' approach, U.S. military veterans would see the biggest cuts ever.
The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell added yesterday, “Maybe a good rule on this kind of budget discourse would be: If you’re too chicken to specify which things you’ll cut, then your opponent gets to characterize what they are instead.”
As for Republicans’ insistence that veterans’ care won’t be cut, Sharon Parrott, who leads the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told me that this opens a different can of worms.
“If [House GOP lawmakers] have decided that veterans programs and defense won’t be cut, everything else — such as K-12 education, child care, nutrition assistance for pregnant people and young children, food safety, public health — has to be cut by one third in 2024; those cuts would rise to an eye-popping 59% in 2033,” Parrott explained. “Before policymakers vote on such deep cuts, they should level with the public on what will be cut and the impacts of those cuts.”
In the meantime, Democrats aren’t letting up, and President Joe Biden appears to have made a handy chart to explain to Republicans why their debt ceiling plan endangers benefits for veterans.