Dushan Yanich – 4/17/05

This page was last updated on April 17, 2005.

Santorum no friend of vets; Dushan Yanich; Beaver County Times; April 17, 2005.

This is Mr. Yanich’s third letter in the last three weeks attacking President Bush and/or Sen. Santorum.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“A very recent (April 12) debate occurred on C-SPAN in the U.S. Senate.

“U.S. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, offered an amendment to the current fiscal year 2005 Veterans Administration budget requesting an additional $1.8 billion of spending. She gave a very sad story about all the needs, shortages of services, long waiting times for an appointment and on and on. She practically begged for all of her colleagues to pass this amendment.”

[RWC] I’m sure it was a moving performance.

“U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Mississippi offered the following rebuttal: Sen. Cochran read a letter from the recently appointed VA Administrator Jim Nichelson, on the job for less than four weeks, that the current VA budget has plenty of money to cover all the vets’ needs. In addition, Sen. Cochran was also concerned that no additional money was available.

“A supplemental budget increase via an amendment requires 60 votes to pass. The present make-up of the Senate is 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one independent. The final vote (two votes were taken) was 46 yes and 54 no.”

[RWC] Sen. Jeffords (VT) is technically an independent, but he consistently votes with the Democrats. Until 2001 when he switched from being a Republican to an independent, Mr. Jeffords was simply a very liberal Republican who frequently voted with Democrats.

“One Republican crossed party lines twice - Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter voted with the Democrats.”

[RWC] Gee, Sen. Specter allegedly voted with Democrats. What a shock – not.

“Guess who cast his vote, not once but twice, against the veterans. Pennsylvania Republican Rick Santorum.

“By the way, the very next debate was on President Bush’s request for an additional $84 billion to cover the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

[RWC] Since Mr. Yanich didn’t write anything new, see my critique of his April 3^rd letter entitled “Bush going after veterans.”

Do we spend enough on veterans? I don’t know, but it seems wrong to bash President Bush and the current Congress given the rate of increase over the most recent five budgets.