No one knows how to pay for new VA bill?

No one knows how to pay for new VA bill?

VETERANS ALREADY PAID FOR IT WHEN THEY SERVED AND PUT THEIR LIVES ON THE LINE!

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Sanders: Veterans bill will get bipartisan support, despite few details on how to pay for it
Stars and Stripes
By Leo Shane III
Published: January 22, 2014

WASHINGTON -- Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., is confident that lawmakers from both parties will support the initiatives in his wide-ranging legislative package for veterans if it comes up for a chamber vote next week.

But Senate leaders still haven’t settled on how they’ll pay for its $30 billion price tag, and that decision will likely determine its future in the House.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has promised the bill -- which covers dozens of changes to Department of Veterans Affairs appropriations, veterans education benefits and post-military health care -- will be brought up for a vote “as quickly as possible.”

But how to pay for the legislation hasn’t been worked out yet. Sanders said his staff is looking at tapping into overseas contingency funding as the most likely option, saying he sees plenty of waste and excess in that account that could be redirected for the post-war needs of veterans.

That’s unlikely to gather Republican support in the House, since leadership there has resisted tapping into overseas resources to pay for new programs.

Republicans have blasted Democratic efforts to use annual reductions in contingency spending to offset new spending, arguing that the approach is nothing more than a budgeting gimmick.
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