What does it take for Dave Brat to care about the members of our military and their families?
An election! At the last possible moment, Brat is pushing out legislation supportive of vets, but his past record on supporting our troops is abysmal.
How does Dave Brat vote when the interests of the surviving spouses of members of the military killed in the line of duty come up against the interests of millionaires?
The widows and widowers get the shaft! Dave Brat voted against the Yarmuth Amendment to the bipartisan bill, H.R. 846, the Military Surviving Spouses Equity Act; the Amendment would have eliminated a penalty that prevents approximately 64,000 surviving military spouses (most of them women) from receiving full death benefits, costing them an average of $15,000 annually.
What could be wrong with offering full benefits to the families of those who’ve lost their lives to protect us?
Doing this would impinge upon benefits to the wealthy: Yarmuth had proposed funding the fix by repealing less than 1% of Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations. The Amendment failed in Committee, with three Republicans and all Democrats voting for it (see details here). Brat was a vote against.
But, with November 6 just around the corner, Dave Brat wants to paint himself as a friend of the military! How pathetic that it takes an election to make him see the value in supporting our troops and their families.