House Republicans Budget Bill Doesnt Spare Veterans. Democrats Are Making Them Regret It.

House Republicans passed a government funding bill last week that would both enact massive federal spending cuts and raise the so-called national debt ceiling for less than a year.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and his deputies celebrated passage of the Limit, Save, Grow Act , using the occasion to challenge President Joe Biden to begin bargaining with him.

Continuing to ignore the problem is not an option, the House GOP leaders said in a statement on Wednesday. The President must come to the table to negotiate.

But House Democrats have wasted no time trying to turn the bill into a political liability. They are depicting the legislation, which does not explicitly exempt the Department of Veterans Affairs from federal spending caps, as a devastating cut to the health care and cash benefits that military veterans receive.

It is a fundamental breaking of faith with people that risked their lives for the country, Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.), an Iraq War veteran running for reelection in a swing seat, told HuffPost by phone on Monday.

The House bill itself is more conservative than what is likely to become law after Biden and Senate Democrats weigh in.

National Democratic Party organs are nonetheless vowing to use the vote against Republicans in competitive House races in 2024. A spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, House Democrats campaign arm, said in a statement on Wednesday that these extremists will have to answer for their hypocrisy to voters in 2024.

House Majority PAC, House Democrats main super PAC, was more explicit about its plans to feature the vote in paid communication.

House Majority PAC will use these extreme votes by MAGA Republicans to slash veterans care by 22% in races across the country to ensure that Democrats take back the House, C.J. Warnke, a spokesperson for House Majority PAC, told HuffPost in a Monday statement.

Biden got in his own dig via Twitter on Tuesday, posting a simplified flow chart he said explained the charge.

I hear House Republicans out on TV saying they would never vote to cut veterans benefits.

In case theres any confusion, I made a little chart that could help them out. pic.twitter.com/SVvamK3KC2

President Biden (@POTUS) May 2, 2023","type":"rich","meta":{"author":"President Biden","author_url":"https://twitter.com/POTUS","cache_age":86400,"description":"I hear House Republicans out on TV saying they would never vote to cut veterans benefits.In case theres any confusion, I made a little chart that could help them out. pic.twitter.com/SVvamK3KC2 President Biden (@POTUS) May 2, 2023\n\n","options":{"_hide_media":{"label":"Hide photos, videos, and cards","value":false},"_maxwidth":{"label":"Adjust width","placeholder":"220-550, in px","value":""},"_theme":{"value":"","values":{"dark":"Use dark theme"}}},"provider_name":"Twitter","thumbnail_height":2000,"thumbnail_url":"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FvIGtmPX0AAfm5e.jpg:large","thumbnail_width":2000,"title":"President Biden on 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I hear House Republicans out on TV saying they would never vote to cut veterans benefits.

In case theres any confusion, I made a little chart that could help them out. pic.twitter.com/SVvamK3KC2
President Biden (@POTUS) May 2, 2023

Taking the criticism seriously, House Republicans are on the defensive. On Sunday, they convened a conference call with reporters to angrily deny the charges, accusing Democrats of shamelessly lying.

Democrats realize they are on the wrong side of the debt crisis and are making up false attacks out of thin air in an attempt to deflect from their unpopular and untenable position, Will Reinert, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, House Republicans campaign arm, told HuffPost in a statement.

The debate over how to characterize the potential effects of House Republicans bill revolves around how much credence to give Republican leaders spoken assurances that the spending caps would not affect veterans benefits.

I will not bring a bill that cuts our veterans, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) said Sunday on ABCs This Week.

But Democrats note that Republicans put their commitment to holding Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid harmless into the bill itself.

Its a safe assumption that youve cut everything you didnt say youre going to protect in the plan, said Ryan, who is one of 37 House Democrats that the NRCC is already targeting.

Your average voter doesnt like the idea of debt, and debt is not popular in a vacuum, but when you lay out for people, Oh, whats being proposed here is holding a lot of these programs that are very popular hostage, that changes peoples opinions very quickly.
- Madeline Conway, Democratic pollster

Of course, what House Republicans say is that the spending caps are just budget-wide targets rather than across-the-board cuts and that they would protect veterans benefits and other sensitive programs in the annual appropriations process. But the ambitiousness of their overall spending reduction targets makes some of those assurances sound either dubious or even more draconian to the programs that they would not spare.

The Republican bill sets limits each year for the next 10 budget years, starting Oct. 1, on how much Congress can dole out in regular appropriations, or discretionary spending. Thats the money that goes to things people think of as general government the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services and Justice, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and other agencies. By contrast, the bill doesnt touch programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which are called mandatory spending because annual spending on those programs is basically on autopilot rather than subject to annual appropriation.

In the pool of so-called discretionary spending, defense made up 53% of the pie for 2023, while non-defense spending, which includes the Department of Veterans Affairs, made up only 47%. Thats where the math comes in.

Because of the almost even split between defense and non-defense discretionary spending, protecting defense means almost doubling the cuts to non-defense outlays if defense is not allowed to be cut as well. Protecting other politically sensitive priorities also means the cuts in the remaining areas would be even deeper.

Officially, the Republican plan would reduce discretionary spending to its 2022 level and allow it to grow at an annual rate of 1%, thereafter. But Democratic groups note that amid year-over-year inflation of about 5% , those caps would effectively entail big cuts even if they were distributed equally between defense and non-defense discretionary spending.

Since House Republicans made it clear early on that they wanted to keep military spending on its present growth path, the White House produced an estimate of how much the GOP would have to cut from all other agencies, including the Department of Veterans Affairs, to still achieve its spending reduction goals. Thats where the 22% cut comes from. According to the White House, if the 2024 overall pool of discretionary spending was limited to 2022s level and the defense spending was held at this years level, everything else would have to be cut by 22% to stay below the cap.