Posted on 03/20/2013 4:51:47 PM PDT by Doogle
Senate lawmakers voted Wednesday to prevent the Obama administration from making painful sequester-tied cuts to military tuition assistance as well as meat and poultry inspectors.
The votes, which came in the form of amendments to a spending bill, marked the first by Congress aimed at easing the impact of the sequester. A number of lawmakers have complained the administration is making the automatic budget cuts more painful than they need to be with its budget decisions.
The first amendment approved by the Senate Wednesday was pushed by Sens. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and Kay Hagan, D-N.C., and would restore tuition assistance for U.S. servicemembers.
The Army, Marines and Air Force had pulled back on the tuition assistance program for this fiscal year in response to the sequester, causing an outcry among lawmakers as U.S. troops stood to lose out on thousands of dollars in potential aid.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Wait for it. there will be a free abortions with a $50,000 bonus per abortion add on amendment before passage. All or nothing.
Shouldn't this have been taken care of YEARS ago?
That is the Government we deserve for as long as we are stupid enough to keep doing it to ourselves.
4
This is a an absolute falsehood. Congress didn't do anything to "prevent" this tragedy because they provided no additional money for Tuition Assistance in the CR bill the House had already passed.
That bill gave the Pentagon very small fiscal relief to restore some money to Operations and Maintenance accounts, which (thanks the Sequester) are down 40-60%. The Sequester and President Obama's July 2012 order dictate that military pay cannot be touched, and most procurement dollars cannot be touched this far into the fiscal year.
It is simply not true that Congress "prevented" anything regarding TA other than providing "language." When it came to dollars for TA, they gave the military squat.
All Congress did was tell the already bleeding services that they had to rape O&M money from other accounts (maintenance, salaries, medical car, DoD teachers, operations, etc) and give it to TA.
Thanks alot. That would be akin to me telling you to pay your property taxes before your groceries, and then I go to the media crowing about how I took care of your taxes.
The CR money was coming anyway because some in Congress realize the absolute devastation that is being done to our military. "Strong language" in a bill does not pay for anything. It simply forces that victim to rob Peter to pay Paul. If they really wanted to "Save" TA - they should have funded it.
Moreover, the stopping of TA proved that all the Congressional bluster about the Sequester being a "joke" was yet another falsehood. The Sequester is a 13% cut to the military this year. Not "2%." Don't listen to Sean Hannity. He is a simpleton.
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