Jay Inslee: “let me add just to what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) was saying. He was asking why this administration…”

“let me add just to what the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) was saying. He was asking why this administration cannot make veterans a priority, but I would suggest that we are not so much even asking the administration to recognize veterans as a priority, but just asking them to give them a decent kind of regular order priority, because the fact of the matter is this administration, and it is sad to say, has not only failed to give the veterans priority. They have really treated them like about second- or third- class citizens. The administration really has decided to put veterans, some of whom have lost limbs and health and their lives in Iraq, on a second or third tier below other folks that the administration values more highly. That is a fairly dramatic thing to say, but let me back up what I mean by that. The administration has decided to put people who earn over $400,000 a year and got about almost a third of the tax breaks that the President handed out, the President refuses to ask any of those folks to contribute in any way to the Iraq war, and so basically the administration has put veterans behind those folks on a lower tier. He has not just put them on a lower priority. He has put them on a second- class tier, but it is not just folks earning a high income. The President has also put Halliburton on a higher tier than the veterans who have actually fought the wars.”