Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders kept up his attacks on the Koch brothers, this time during an answer in Thursday’s debate about his work supporting veterans while attacking Republicans for not backing veterans when it matters.
While touting his work on behalf of veterans, Sanders bashed GOP members for giving “a lot of speeches about how they love veterans,” and not supporting measures to back them — specifically his past legislation to reform heath care and the delivering of benefits before later on passing the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act with the help of Sen. John McCain and others.
“It is interesting to me — you know, Republicans give a lot of speeches about how they love veterans,” Sanders said before touting support from veterans organizations for his work. “Republicans talk a good game about veterans, but when it came to put money on the line to protect our veterans, frankly, they were not there.”
Sanders, a longtime member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, then talked up his work with McCain to pass the bill, before training his fire on Charles and David Koch, who are prime targets of Democrats. The Vermont socialist specifically hammered them for wanting to privatize benefits for vets through their want to dismantle a host of entitlement programs.
Government-run Veterans Affairs facilities have been criticized recently for offering substandard care and endangering veterans’ health through long waiting periods.
“There are people — Koch brothers amongst others, who have a group called Concerned Veterans of America, funded by the Koch brothers,” Sanders said. “The Koch brothers, by the way, want to destroy Social Security, medicare, medicaid, every governmental program passed since the 1930s.”
“Yeah, there are people out there who want to privatize it,” Sanders added.
