Monday, January 7, 2019

Ben Dover takes charge at VA - The Trump Administration Is Launching Stealth Attacks on Veterans

The Republican Party stands with America’s veterans — until America’s veterans stand up to the party’s donor class.
The GOP relies on former servicemen and women as both a constituency (in 2016, Donald Trump won them by a two-to-one margin), and as reinforcements in its culture war. Veterans command broad, bipartisan respect — and thus, have the power to turn any cause they’re associated with into a sacred cow. Republicans have had little difficulty reframing calls for cutting America’s gargantuan military budget or ending misbegotten wars — or even reducing police violence against African-Americans — as affronts to those who fought and died for this country.
But veterans’ cultural cachet is a double-edged sword for the GOP. The conservative movement exists to undermine the notion that the federal government has an obligation to safeguard the well-being of working-class Americans. And veterans are both largely working-class and disproportionately likely to rely on public programs and public-interest regulations for their well-being. Vets get their health care from the single most socialized segment of America’s health-care sector — and most of their advocacy organizations want to keep it that way. Meanwhile, veterans’ acute vulnerability to predatory lenders has abetted the passage of bipartisan legislation strengthening federal regulations on the finance industry. Which is to say that on a number of economic issues, Democrats are the ones holding the “support our troops” card.
All this presented the Trump administration with a stark choice: It could either show deference to the interests of one of its core constituencies, or maximize its cronies’ ability to profit off of deregulation and privatization (at considerable political risk).
It’s now clear that president Trump has opted for door No. 2.

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