LEADER JEFFRIES: "VETERANS ARE NOW AT RISK BECAUSE OF EXTREME MAGA REPUBLICAN BEHAVIOR"
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, held his weekly press conference where he was joined by a group of Members of the House Democratic Caucus who have served in the military. The group highlighted how both the extreme MAGA-engineered default and the Default On America Act would harm our nation's veterans.
Leader Jeffries: Good morning, everyone. Today, it's my honor to be joined by a distinguished group of Members of Congress and a distinguished group of individuals who served our country in extraordinary ways in the military, sacrificed themselves for the greater good, put their lives at risk, served with other fellow Americans and then came back home, served the country in the United States House of Representatives. We're thankful for the work that they have done and continue to do in this country, for our democracy and certainly for veterans, veterans who are now at risk because of the extreme MAGA Republican behavior, with respect to this manufactured MAGA default crisis.
Now, America should always pay our bills and keep the promises that we've made, to Social Security recipients, to women, to children, to families and certainly, to our veterans. But Republicans are driving us down a dangerous road of default or have presented the American people with another unacceptable choice, which is devastating cuts to children, devastating cuts to Medicaid, devastating cuts to nutrition, devastating cuts to education, devastating cuts to public safety and devastating cuts to our veterans. That is unacceptable, unconscionable and un-American. And we're going to continue to fight against it. And I'm thankful that, leading this fight, are those Members of Congress who are closest to the veterans community, because they are veterans themselves.
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Rep. Thompson: Thank you, Mr. Leader. Thank you for bringing us together. It's an honor to be on the stage with fellow veterans from our Caucus. This is an extremely important time for veterans. As the Leader said, this is a manufactured crisis that's going to play hard on veterans. VA appointments are going to be cancelled because of this. There's 900,000 veterans who depend upon care providers. Those care providers aren't going to receive any pay if we go over this fiscal cliff, this financial cliff. 450,000 VA employees won't get their pay. Veterans depend upon them for services. And then, as the Leader said, it's not just the veterans programs, but it's everything else, from health care and public safety, veterans are impacted by all of that. So any veterans wanting to buy a house, interest rates go up, they get hit. Any veterans using their credit card, interest rates, they get hit. Any veteran wanting to buy a car, interest rates go up, they get hit again. Veterans have given enough. They don't need to be hit again, especially by a manufactured crisis. The Republicans should keep us here in Washington, D.C. this weekend. We should get this thing behind us. We should take care of the American people and the veterans that are being impacted by their irresponsible behavior.
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Rep. Sherrill: It is wonderful to be here today. In fact, you're seeing some of the more bipartisan members of our caucus in are veterans. I was just with Mike this morning, our-our Vietnam veteran to clean the Vietnam wall with the For Country Caucus, a bipartisan group of veterans, because when you're asked to serve, you don't sign anything that that affiliates any political party. You're asked to serve your country. And I think that's why we are so concerned today as we look at the Republican proposals and how harmful they are to our veterans. One of the early pieces of legislation I passed was the Blue Water Navy Act, taking care of members of the Blue Water Navy from the Vietnam era who have been exposed to Agent Orange. Imagine that. Decades after their service, colleagues who had died from that exposure, they were just getting the support they needed.
So we worked incredibly hard to pass the PACT Act to protect veterans who have been exposed to toxic fumes and gases. And the president's budget funded that. And the Republicans have now cut $12 billion from the toxic exposures fund with their budget. When they say that this isn't going to hurt veterans, they're not being upfront about what this will do to veterans. You just heard about what this could do to our veterans community. And as veterans, we care very much about promoting freedom and equality and justice. And to see that these attacks on the United States dollar, these attacks on the full faith and credit of the United States of America as we come into Memorial Day weekend, flies in the face of all that we fought for. So that is why we're here today to say that we must lift. We must not default on our debt. We must lift this. We must make sure that we can, in fact, continue to support our veterans, especially as we remember their service, and their sacrifice this Memorial Day weekend.
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Rep. Crow: It's a pleasure to be here with Leader Jeffries and with my fellow veterans. It is not a pleasure, however, to be talking about something as basic as caring for our veterans and maintaining the solemn and sacred oath that we make to our veterans and our servicemen and women. You know, there's a saying that you shouldn't tell me what your values are. You should show me your budget, and then I'll tell you what your values are. You know, the rank hypocrisy of some people in this town who are willing, without shame, to go up and talk about our veterans, who will spend time with our Gold Star families heading into Memorial Day weekend, and yet are willing to make drastic cuts to basic health care that our men and women earned and deserve in service to our country is unacceptable. And we are here to call it out because we know this sacred oath and we know this sacred promise.
When our young men and women get up and they raise their right hand, generation after generation, raise their right hand and take that up. And to fulfill that oath, some of them will have to give their lives. They'll spend time away from their families, missed holidays, missed birthdays, injuries, post-traumatic stress, that's what that oath means. But it's a reciprocal oath. It flows two ways. They take that oath because our country makes an oath to them, that if they need care, that if they give their lives and service to this country, that our nation will be there for their family, for their children. That is an oath that should be without question, that should be unbreakable and yet, here we are. Because of gamesmanship by the House Republicans, it is in question. It's unacceptable. We are here to call it out. We are here to keep faith with that oath and to fight for our brothers and sisters because they have so dutifully fought for us.
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Rep. Lieu: Thank you, Leader Jeffries, for your exceptional leadership and to the terrific speakers we just had. I want to mention the other people we have with us today. We have Congressman Chris Deluzio from Pennsylvania, Congressman Ruben Gallego from Arizona, Congressman Jeff Jackson from North Carolina, we have the Ranking Member of the Veterans Committee, Mark Takano, we have the Ranking Member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Military Affairs and Veterans Affairs, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and we have the Air Force representative here. And I want to just talk briefly about why we know Republicans want to cut funding to veterans. One, they already did it in the Default On America Act, they claw back provisions that had money for the VA and it's going to make 22% cuts to veterans funding. And how do we know that? Because they didn't protect that funding. They had a choice. They went ahead and protected some companies who didn't get tax credits and they put that protection in, but they specifically did not do that for veterans. So we know they want to cut veterans' funding. And if we default, that's going to hurt veterans a very big way.
Full press conference can be watched here.