This rank hypocrisy was highlighted when Senator Jeff Sessions offered an amendment that would avoid the cut to veterans and instead eliminate an IRS loophole that allows illegal immigrants to benefit from the Additional Child Tax Credit. The vote went down on an almost entirely party-line vote, with vulnerable Senator Kay Hagan (D-NC) voting with Republicans to make the change. While the Democrats certainly deserve the lion’s share of the blame for that, the 169 Republicans in the House who voted for the deal and 12 Senate Republicans who voted for cloture all effectively signed off on those pension cuts.
In addition, lead House negotiator Paul Ryan deserves special criticism not only because he negotiated the bill, but because he kept silent as the Senate shot down Sessions’ common-sense amendment. However, as Breitbart’s Matthew Boyle reported, Ryan’s staff did eliminate talking points published online that originally claimed disabled veterans are protected from cuts in the budget deal. That took place two days before the House voted to pass the budget deal.
Ryan’s silence is also particularly ironic because he sponsored H.R. 5652, which passed the House in May 2012 and eliminated the loophole Sessions targeted. Given Ryan’s work in crafting the budget deal, he may have been able to make a difference for veterans if he had chosen to speak up. Instead, he remained silent and helped cement a loophole into place that he opposed in the past.
How much will this preference for illegal immigrants over wounded warriors cost the taxpayers? According to IRS data gathered by Just Facts, $4.2 billion in credits was paid out to illegal immigrants in 2010. Assuming this stays the same for a decade, it means Senate Democrats along with some Senate and House Republicans voted to save $6 billion at the expense of wounded veterans in order to spend $42 billion on illegal immigrants. It’s shameful that any member of Congress would choose to support illegal immigrants over American citizens, but it’s particularly grating that they put illegal aliens in front of our troops.
How can they in good conscience target our veterans this way when our troops are still fighting and dying in the field? It’s bad enough that they’re going after our veterans at all, but if they were going to do it, couldn’t they have at least waited until our troops weren’t spilling their blood in Afghanistan to try to save the Obama Administration’s half-hearted prosecution of that war?
Unfortunately, it seems that illegal aliens are simply more important to many members of Congress than the troops that sacrifice for our freedom.