Demagoging support for the military

The AP reports: "While we the governors do all we can for our vets and our returning soldiers, our federal government has the primary responsibility for meeting the needs of our veterans," Gov. Ed Rendell said in his party's weekly radio address. "And that's why I find the president's budget cuts for critical veterans services to be unconscionable." And that was the earlier increase. Now Bush wants to more than double it again.

The White House's proposed budget includes charging certain veterans a$250 annual registration fee. It also includes raising the prescription drug copayment of those same veterans from the current $7 to $15 for a 30-day supply. Note that the current $7 figure is the result of Bush tripling the copayment two years ago. The budget also would cut $293.5 million by limiting the veterans whose care in state-operated veterans homes is reimbursed by the federal government.

On the 2003 copayment increase Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-NJ) said the proposal raises questions about the impact on "near-poor" veterans whose incomes are just high enough to require that they pay the new premium. The American Legion called it "utterly ridiculous."

Where it gets interesting is this little nugget towards the end of the short AP story: The proposed cuts in veterans health care are generally oriented toward veterans with higher incomes..., officials said.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but didn't Bush and congressional Republicans rest the tax cuts on their own argument of fairness: It is the prosperous who pay the bulk of income taxes, so they should get most of the tax relief? Of course these reductions in veterans benefits are not "taxes" strictly speaking. But, they do reveal the slight-of-hand that Republicans are using to demagogue taxation while materially undercutting their own rationale by increasing fees elsewhere.

So what we have is a Bush-led GOP that on the one hand claimed that those who are more affluent shouldered the greater tax burden and therefore deserved the greater tax cuts (ie. deserved to have more money in their pockets) and yet on the other hand they are actively trying to stiff veterans who, although not even approaching what we would call "affluent," are nevertheless not in as dire of economic straits as other veterans... This during a time of "war."