Free Republic

<p>Republican senators were making a last-ditch bid to undo cuts to military retiree benefits in the House-passed budget deal ahead of a crucial vote Tuesday morning in the Senate.</p> <p>Alabama GOP Sen. Jeff Sessions filed an amendment late Monday to restore money that was cut from veteran and military retiree pension benefits by closing a loophole that allows illegal immigrants to qualify for child tax credits.</p>

For Florida’s nearly 200,000 military retirees — more than any state except Texas — a budget deal moving through the U.S. Senate Wednesday is projected to shave $20 billion dollars from the country’s deficit in ways that have many veterans organizations outraged. The legislation struck by House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray has a provision that drops the cost of living allowance for military retirees and disabled veterans to 1 percentage point below inflation. That is, if inflation for a given year is 3 percent, cost of living adjustments will rise only 2...

(CNN) – Sen. Patty Murray, co-crafter of the bipartisan budget agreement and member of the veterans affair committee, said Wednesday cuts to pension benefits for some military veterans under the spending plan was a part of a compromise to avoid billions in cuts to the defense industry. "We had to look at how we could find compromises. There are things in this I like and there are things in this I don't like," the Senate Budget Committee chair and Democrat from Washington State said in an interview on CNN's "New Day." "But at the end of the day, if we...