McCain and his record against the Vet population

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by nittanyalum

Ignoring the AFL/CIO and The Nation are fine, but why is everyone skipping over what scbelle posted? I think it's interesting info. if a veteran's advocacy group gives only 4 Senators a grade of "D" and McCain is one of them. http://www.veteranreportcard.org/list.html

I checked it, I saw the "A" list consisted primarily of Democrats, whereas just about all (if not all) of their unacceptable folks were the Republicans who would self-identify as fiscally conservative.

The report card is based upon 22 votes by Congress and how the congressmen voted on those "key" 22 issues. It's not surprising that Republicans would be voting against these bills, drafted by Democrats, with God knows what else in them.

I can't get the website to show me what the particular 22 issues were (it stalls when I query the page), but I'm guessing we don't have links to the full bills or the explanation as to why someone might have voted the way they did and whether their motivation had anything to do with screwing veterans.

[CrackerBarrel]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I checked it, I saw the "A" list consisted primarily of Democrats, whereas just about all (if not all) of their unacceptable folks were the Republicans who would self-identify as fiscally conservative.

The report card is based upon 22 votes by Congress and how the congressmen voted on those "key" 22 issues. It's not surprising that Republicans would be voting against these bills, drafted by Democrats, with God knows what else in them.

I can't get the website to show me what the particular 22 issues were (it stalls when I query the page), but I'm guessing we don't have links to the full bills or the explanation as to why someone might have voted the way they did and whether their motivation had anything to do with screwing veterans.

I can't get to the pages showing what their scored votes were or their legislative agenda either. But yeah their "A" list is most of the Democrats in the Senate which indicates that their scoring is probably not as well focused as some of the big scorecards on other issues. And since their main scored vote seems to have been the GI bill I looked up why Republicans voted against it:

From Politico.com at http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0408/9966.html

Yet the former Navy pilot and Vietnam POW makes himself a target by refusing to endorse Webb’s new GI education bill and instead signing on to a Republican alternative that focuses more on career soldiers than on the great majority who leave after their first four years.

Undaunted, Webb, who was a Marine infantry officer in Vietnam, is closing in on the bipartisan support needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate, where the cost of his package — estimated now at about $52 billion over 10 years — is sure to be an issue. But McCain’s support would seal the deal like nothing else, and the new Republican bill, together with a letter of opposition Tuesday from Defense Secretary Robert Gates, threatens to peel off support before the Democrat gets to the crucial threshold of 60 votes.

“There are fundamental differences,” McCain told Politico. “He creates a new bureaucracy and new rules. His bill offers the same benefits whether you stay three years or longer. We want to have a sliding scale to increase retention. I haven’t been in Washington, but my staff there said that his has not been eager to negotiate.”

So it seems that Republicans voted against it because the Secretary of Defense said that it would hurt troop retention and they had their own alternative which focused on troop retention but the Democrats just passed their version without trying to negotiate on it. That would explain Republican "No" votes on the bill which was the main focus of the scorecard and thus why Democrats have all the A votes and the most pro-military members of the Senate having a "D".

[Elephant Walk]

How is not voting for bills that would expand the power of government automatically voting against anyone?

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by Elephant Walk

How is not voting for bills that would expand the power of government automatically voting against anyone?

It's "against" the poor soul who gets less of my money handed to them because they happen to fall into a certain category of people more favored by the government.

[nittanyalum]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I checked it, I saw the "A" list consisted primarily of Democrats, whereas just about all (if not all) of their unacceptable folks were the Republicans who would self-identify as fiscally conservative.

The report card is based upon 22 votes by Congress and how the congressmen voted on those "key" 22 issues. It's not surprising that Republicans would be voting against these bills, drafted by Democrats, with God knows what else in them.

I can't get the website to show me what the particular 22 issues were (it stalls when I query the page), but I'm guessing we don't have links to the full bills or the explanation as to why someone might have voted the way they did and whether their motivation had anything to do with screwing veterans.

You can read all the descriptions and all the votes here -- http://www.veteranreportcard.org/reportcard.pdf To be fair, after digging in to the Senate side, McCain was absent for 6 of the votes; of the 4 votes he cast, 3 were 'with' veterans, 1 was 'against'. So they must still be holding the absences as non-support for their issues.

ETA: and to the vote discussed above regarding the GI Bill, read the veterans description of that, it took 3 iterations and three votes on that issue, the veterans saw the Republican push to stop the original bill as "keeping" educational benefits out of reach of veterans because they felt it would help troop retention -- this may be a perspective thing, but some may see that as the worst kind of political manipulation, instead of fulfilling the promises of joining the military, serving and earning the right to education benefits and more options in life, they maneuver to keep soldiers with military as their only option or change the terms of their deal to 'earn' the educational rights previously offered by the GI Bill. I don't see how that can be defined as "pro-military".

[epchick]

Originally Posted by nittanyalum

Ignoring the AFL/CIO and The Nation are fine, but why is everyone skipping over what scbelle posted? I think it's interesting info. if a veteran's advocacy group gives only 4 Senators a grade of "D" and McCain is one of them. http://www.veteranreportcard.org/list.html

I wanna know how McCain got a "D." They picked 9 key votes, McCain agreed with them 3 times, and the other 6 were "not scored."



I don't know how they are doing it, but it seems there are many "passed" and "Agreed to" statuses. Why didn't they score the first 6?


ETA: I will admit I haven't looked around the website much but it is a website for Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans. It seems a lot of those bills & things are for those veterans and not for veterans of other wars (like my dad who fought in Vietnam)

[MysticCat]

This is why I rarely pay heed to the "my opponent voted for/against X umpty-dumpty times" claims, regardless of who makes them. Legislation is rarely that cut-and-dry. Even if you support the ultimate goal of a particular bill, there can still be very valid reasons to vote against that bill.

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by epchick

I wanna know how McCain got a "D." They picked 9 key votes, McCain agreed with them 3 times, and the other 6 were "not scored."



I don't know how they are doing it, but it seems there are many "passed" and "Agreed to" statuses. Why didn't they score the first 6?


ETA: I will admit I haven't looked around the website much but it is a website for Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans. It seems a lot of those bills & things are for those veterans and not for veterans of other wars (like my dad who fought in Vietnam)

The question is...when those votes came up, was McCain in those sessions?


If not where was he and why wasn't he there?

[DaemonSeid]

Originally Posted by Kevin

I checked it, I saw the "A" list consisted primarily of Democrats, whereas just about all (if not all) of their unacceptable folks were the Republicans who would self-identify as fiscally conservative.

The report card is based upon 22 votes by Congress and how the congressmen voted on those "key" 22 issues. It's not surprising that Republicans would be voting against these bills, drafted by Democrats, with God knows what else in them.

I can't get the website to show me what the particular 22 issues were (it stalls when I query the page), but I'm guessing we don't have links to the full bills or the explanation as to why someone might have voted the way they did and whether their motivation had anything to do with screwing veterans.

kevin you did see the search tool that allows you to place your representative of choice in it and pull thier record up right?

[epchick]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

The question is...when those votes came up, was McCain in those sessions?


If not where was he and why wasn't he there?

The PDF claimed he was "Absent" in those votes. Obama was absent in votes as well, so you can ask yourself the same question (where was he and why wasn't he there).

Plus Obama got 2 extra points for the 9/11 bill, while McCain didn't. IMHO, i would have agreed with McCain.

[Kevin]

Originally Posted by DaemonSeid

kevin you did see the search tool that allows you to place your representative of choice in it and pull thier record up right?

Nope, when I checked the site, it was running slow and a lot of things were freezing up when I queried them.

As the above posters mentioned, knowing what a Congressman's vote on a particular issue happens to be is not enough information to form a conclusion as to anything.