Political Quotes

“As we have been discussing, the Veterans' Affairs is out of money. Now, this is not something that was unpredictable. I predicted this a year or two ago when we expanded benefits. I think it is the priority and it is the responsibility of America to take care of its veterans, but we still have to think about what we are doing. We can't say: Well, every veteran should have a Corvette and $200,000 a year because we don't have the money for that. So we try to link benefits to something we can afford and something within reason related to their service. When the PACT Act was passed, though, there were those of us saying: Hmm, if you allow something like high blood pressure to be associated with military service, you may have a problem. I am 61 years old. Sixty percent of people over 60 have hypertension. You think you might get too many people applying for things if you allow really common conditions like hypertension to be connected to these benefits. What we were talking about were burn pits. And burn pits you can convince me--and they have--that inhaling things from burn pits might damage your lungs, and you might have respiratory diseases or lung cancers. But saying hypertension is related to this allows Pandora's box, and now we have millions of people flooding through the doors to get benefits, and they are out of money. This is typical of Washington. This year, we will spend $6 trillion, and we will bring in 4.…”