In a letter breathtaking in its arrogance, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina on Friday blasted veterans’ groups for being insufficiently antagonistic toward VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. The entire GOP is now focused on the canard (following the Benghazi playbook exactly) that Shinseki and President Obama are the cause of the woes at VA hospitals across the country.
But where does the real problem lie?
The real source of trouble is that Veterans Administration funding by Congress is repeated savaged, ridiculed and then slashed to ribbons by Republicans. These same Republicans vote time after time, in every budget the Wisconsin Strangler (Paul Ryan) proposes, to continue to lavish tax breaks and loopholes on the likes of Exxon and General Electric (the most profitable corporation of all time). Yet when it comes to essential government services these phony deficit-zealots demand a dime of cuts for every dime of expenditure. How can you run an enormous medical network when you get less than 50% of what is necessary to maintain even a bare-bones operation? The GOP isn’t interested in answering that question, or even listening to it.
Text of postcard to Richard Burr:
May 26, 2014 (Memorial Day)—Sen. Burr: I was thoroughly disgusted to read your “open letter” to veterans groups issued May 23 in which you blasted them for being insufficiently critical of VA Secretary Eric Shinseki. The problem with the VA is that it has been constantly starved of funding by THE REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS. Every time funding bills for VA hospitals are introduced GOP politicians fall over themselves to see who can propose deeper slashes. Your repulsive and blatantly self-serving “letter” should remind everyone where the crisis at the Veterans Administration lies—with those GOP politicians rabid to devastate veterans’ benefits while siphoning billions out of the public purse to lavish on big oil, big AG, GE (who pays NO taxes) and the Koch Brothers. You are a disgrace to the label “American”.
I urge all of you to send this craven asshole your own postcard—
Senator Richard Burr
217 Russell S.O.B.
Washington DC 20510