Perhaps We Should Deem Combat Injuries Pre-Existing Conditions

I'm sure there would be some savings to be found in that legislative brilliance as well:

Tea party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has unveiled a plan for cutting $400 billion in federal spending that includes freezing Veterans Affairs Department health care spending and cutting veterans’ disability benefits.

Her proposed VA budget cuts would account for $4.5 billion of the savings included in the plan, posted on her official House of Representatives website.

Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, said cutting veterans’ health care spending is an ill-advised move at a time when the number of veterans continues to grow as troops return from Iraq and Afghanistan. Sullivan said he finds it difficult to see how VA could freeze health care costs without hurting veterans.

“It is really astonishing to see this,” he said.

I wouldn't agree that this is especially astonishing coming from Bachmann, who proves herself to be a completely vapid idiot week after week (just see her SOTU 'response'). Cutting veteran's healthcare during two never-ending armed conflicts, at a time when 20% of returning Iraq/Afghanistan combat veterans are being diagnosed with PTSD, is just epically stupid, not to mention cruel. For a country like the US, and it's long history of acting as the world's police, the least we can do is properly care for our veterans upon their return. It really kills me that Republicans can honestly suggest something like this as a viable option for balancing the budget or reducing the deficit while reflexively refusing to ever raise taxes of any kind. I mean really...really! How can you seriously argue that cutting VA healthcare is a superior fiscal policy to say, requiring that billionaire hedge fund managers pay taxes on their exorbitant capital gains at a marginal tax rate that isn't among the lowest in the tax code for income? It's a position so stupid that it deserves no place in any rational debate, but these are the kinds of things that originate from half of our political establishment, and as such, they are treated as Serious Ideas. It really shows you their priorities, and it just kills me that this is the 'opposition party' in the US. Having a debate when one side is this far displaced from any sort of logic, facts, or reality is not a debate - it's the equivalent of reasoning with a child. And we just lost a national election to these people.

(Via Balloon Juice)