Citing an “epidemic level” of veteran suicides, an urgent legislative response moved swiftly through Congress last week. But then it hit a wall.
The Government Accountability Office recently found that the Department of Veteran Affairs’ crisis line failed to respond in a timely manner to between 20 and 30 percent of veterans who called or texted in need of counseling and support. Rep. David Young, a freshman congressman from Iowa, unanimously passed a reform bill, the No Veterans Crisis Line Call Should Go Unanswered Act, through the House of Representatives on Monday. By Wednesday, its companion bill had found similar support in the Senate—only to come up against outgoing Minority Leader Harry Reid’s rabid partisanship.
Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted his disapproval of blatant partisanship on the part of the Senate’s Democratic leadership:
.@YoungForIowa has worked hard on a bill to make sure no call to the #veterans crisis call line goes unanswered, but Harry Reid blocked it.
— Paul Ryan (@PRyan) September 30, 2016
Congressman Young told the THE WEEKLY STANDARD he was disappointed that “possible political posturing in the Senate has blocked progress on the No Veterans Crisis Line Call Should Go Unanswered Act—our veterans deserve better.” Meanwhile, a source in the office of South Dakota senator John Thune, the companion bill’s Republican cosponsor, confirmed that the legislation won unanimous support among Senate Republicans. Objection to potentially lifesaving reform could only have come from Senate Democrats.
Protesting perhaps too much, Reid flipped the blame in a statement on Tuesday, saying, “Republicans should be ashamed of themselves.” He added, “If the Republican-led Senate was at work today as it was supposed to be, this bill would have passed by now.” Regarding the appearance that Senator Reid intentionally stalled the bill in order to prevent what could be considered a Republican victory, a spokesman told the Des Moines Register: “I don’t want to go around and accuse people of lying, but it’s possible that they are being misled by the (Senate) Republican leadership.” And he claimed that Democrats were not in fact given the chance to approve the bill because floor voting had closed, and “most members were scattered to the winds,” by the time the bill came up for unanimous consent.
What’s odd about this argument is that approval by unanimous consent—a standard practice to expedite unobjectionable bipartisan solutions like lifesaving improvements to the VA crisis line—doesn’t require a floor vote. (Per the definition of unanimous consent: “If no Senator objects, the Senate permits the action, but if any one senator objects, the request is rejected.”)
Either at least one Democrat objected to the bill’s contents, or “They just didn’t want to clear it before we left,” Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, told TWS. While Republicans easily reached approval by unanimous consent, “The Democrats didn’t sign off,” he said.
Indeed, stalling bipartisan action by incumbent Republicans fits a familiar pattern for the outgoing minority leader. The week prior, he denied a hearing to Pennsylvania senator Pat Toomey’s bipartisan bill to outlaw a grotesquely cruel form of animal abuse. Remarkably, Senator Reid—unlike, one would imagine, any other elected official in human history—finds a political advantage in opposing protections for suffering veterans and tortured animals.
