Simpson's Veterans Benefits: Die Quickly
by digby
Good news everybody. We don't have to let those Bush tax cuts for millionaires expire after all. Alan Simpson has found the money for it:
The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit commission said Tuesday.
Former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson's comments came a day after The Associated Press reported that diabetes has become the most frequently compensated ailment among Vietnam veterans, even though decades of research has failed to find more than a possible link between the defoliant Agent Orange and diabetes.
"The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess," said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has also allowed Vietnam veterans to get money for ailments such as lung cancer and prostate cancer, and the agency finalized a proposal Tuesday to grant payments for heart disease -- the nation's leading cause of death.
All those Iraq war vets had better shape up or ship out too. We can't afford to keep supporting people with brain injuries and lost limbs forever. Get a job or be a man and relieve us of the burden of your care. (Oh right, there are no jobs. Well then I guess the decision's been made, hasn't it?)
Seriously, if poor, old, and sick people across the board would just do the right thing and die, we could reform the hell out all the "entitlements." Their selfishness is really brings down the country.
The good news is that the pumpkin hued future Speaker has a plan to cut billions of dollars out of the veterans' budget so if these so-called "wounded warriors" persist in sucking from the public tit, so if they refuse to "do the right thing" they're going to have a rude awakening.
Their country is calling them once again to sacrifice their lives. And this time they mean it.
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