It is a breach of faith with those who served and by serving carried on under an agreement by the terms of which they would endure hardship and danger and even postponed present benefits not just for themselves but for their wives and kids for a benefit to be derived later-as pension. In other words, they lived up to the terms of their contract and the government now breaks it's part of the bargain. That is unfair because the government has the unilateral power to break the agreement and, so long as the government majority holds, our veterans are without recourse.
Worse, the doublecross extends not just to the kind of healthy veterans in their 40s and 50s whom Paul Ryan describes in an attempt to justify his doublecross to be in their peak work years but it applies to veterans who came back from their service missing arms, legs, the ability to walk, the ability to sleep, the ability to think normally. These capacities they have sacrificed by them because they were patriots but it was a sacrifice made while they believed in the deal.
Meanwhile, Paul Ryan contrives a budget compromise which continues to compensate those who have rendered the country no service whatsoever, who are fully able-bodied both mentally and physically, and who do not work. It is immoral and it is, inevitably, bad policy.
We subsidize indolence, selfishness, dependency while we punish industry, selflessness, independence. Immoral policy, it goes without saying, is bad policy in practice. It shapes expectations, it conditions the culture, it degrades all the virtues and condones failings of character.
We have by this deal when it is consummated, and it no doubt will be consummated, in effect said to the Democrats that the entire Ponzi scheme which is the financial operation of the federal government is one that we accept in principle provided only that we can tinker at the margins and, so long as we can appear to make progress, so long as we can publicly posture and deprecate the scheme and promise to reform it, we will condone it in practice and in reality where it counts.
The entire motivation by Paul Ryan and the Republicans whom he represented in the negotiations was to secure one commitment and one commitment only, a commitment directed not at the Democrats, or even secured from the Democrats, it is a commitment directed against the base of his own political party. Paul Ryan sold out the veterans so that he could sell out The Tea Party. There will be no more government shutdowns, The Tea Party now has no leverage to impose a shutdown on the establishment wing of the Republican Party.
Take that Ted Cruz, take that wounded veterans.
