Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said the veteran job bill that failed to move through the Senate on Wednesday was an example of the "crap" Congress had done for years.
The legislation was blocked by Senate Republicans who said it violated budget rules by adding to the deficit. It won 58 votes, two short of the 60 needed to proceed.
Coburn said it also violated last summer's debt-ceiling deal, known as the Budget Control Act, by adding more spending than was agreed to in that legislation.
“If in fact we’re going to address the economic problems in this country, you have to quit playing felonious accounting with what you’re doing, which is exactly what that bill did,” Coburn said Thursday on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe." “It violated the Budget Control Act … it’s exactly the same kind of, pardon my word, crap, that Congress has done for years and does another. It was a gimmick and we knew it was a gimmick as far as getting around the spending. It’s time for us to start acting responsible.
“We have six government veterans jobs programs now and nobody knows if they’re working,” Coburn continued. “We’re spending a billion dollars a year on it and we were going to create another one that was supposed to be temporary.”
The bill would have created new job-training programs to help veterans find work in targeted fields such as national park conservation, historical preservation projects, police work and firefighting.
Ramsey Cox contributed.
