Joe Cunningham: “I would like to laud my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Veterans issues are very important. Both sides of the…”

“I would like to laud my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Veterans issues are very important. Both sides of the aisle support this bill very well. But every once in a while we have got people that just cannot stop themselves from partisan shots, and they need to be answered. The gentleman from California said there is not enough money for veterans because we spent the surplus in tax relief. First of all, surplus is defined as the amount of money above what it needs to run the Government with a 4 to 6 percent increase. That is what this committee has done. Secondly, the 124 deployments, $200 billion cost destroying our military and our ability to fund things like the veterans, $200 billion under the peacekeeping deployments of Bill Clinton. Recently, the ranking minority member says, ``Well, this is a good step but we have got a long way to go.'' The gentleman from Missouri, the minority leader, recently said that raising taxes in 1993, he was proud of it when the Democrats had control of the White House, the House and the Senate, and he would do it again. I think it is right to point out what those taxes were. The first part of those taxes were to cut the COLAs of the veterans. The second part was to cut the COLAs of the military. That is the wrong direction. The third was to increase the tax on the middle class which affected military and the veterans.”