Bush lauds McCain’s work on GI Bill expansion — despite McCain’s opposition

June 30, 2008

On Thursday night, the Senate approved the war supplemental, which included the expansion of the GI Bill, sponsored by Sens. Jim Webb (D-Va.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), and approved with broad, bipartisan support. This morning, the president signed it into law.

For those of you who can’t watch clips online, Bush said, “…I want to thank members who worked hard for the GI Bill expansion — especially Senators Webb and Warner, Graham, Burr, and McCain. This bill shows the American people that even in an election year, Republicans and Democrats can come together to stand behind our troops and their families.”

The chutzpah involved with such a pronouncement is truly breathtaking.

First, the Bush White House publicly opposed the GI Bill expansion. The president ended up reversing course when lawmakers ignored his demands and passed the bill anyway — by a veto-proof majority (75 votes). It left Bush in the untenable position of signing into law a bill he actively fought against, or vetoing a measure to help give veterans better educational benefits. He wisely chose the prior, but his comments this morning made it sound like Bush wanted the GI Bill expansion all along. The opposite is true.

Second, and more importantly, the president praising McCain for his “hard work” on this bill is a special kind of stupid.

McCain not only opposed the GI Bill expansion, he fought against it. Indeed, he bragged that his opposition to the bill was evidence of his character. Just one month before the bill passed, McCain said, “It would be easier, much easier politically for me to have joined Senator Webb in offering his legislation.” But the AP noted, “McCain said he opposed Webb’s measure because it would give the same benefit to everyone regardless of how many times he or she has enlisted.”

McCain went so far as to say the GI Bill expansion would literally “hurt the military.”

What’s more, praising McCain for having “worked hard” to pass the bill is especially amusing considering that McCain didn’t even show up to vote at all when the bill came to the floor, and didn’t show up to vote on the supplemental, either.

Indeed, Bush praised five senators this morning for their leadership. One (McCain) fought against the bill and then didn’t bother to vote on it. Two (Graham and Burr) fought against the bill and voted against it. Chuck Hagel was an original sponsor of the bill, the president ignored him altogether. (Talk about a slap in the face….)

Now, the right will argue that McCain, Graham, and Burr deserve praise because they worked with House Republicans to water the bill down a little before final passage. Why Bush and conservatives believe that was a valuable move is a mystery.

And all of this, of course, comes just a few days after McCain took credit for the passage of a bill he fought every step of the way.

We’re dealing with a group of people who know no shame, and will lie recklessly and without a hint of embarrassment.

I guess that this comes under the heading of “creating our own reality.” Of course the task is much easier with a compliant, tame poodle of a press corp.

  • no, we’re dealing with a group of people who get that you can create your own reality with low information voters, and sometimes more than that if the MSM is willing to aid and abet a little bit. we’re also dealing with a group of people who have no moral compass to prevent them from doing so when they see an opportunity.

    it is seriously wrong, exceedingly harmful to democracy, and immoral. but it makes perfect political sense.

    the answer is either a better media, a better electorate, or both (yes, I’m in the middle of reading “Just How Stupid Are We?” by Rick Shenkman)

  • I’ve come up with a new bumper sticker: The Bush Administration: Where Stupidity and Corruption Intersect.

  • McCain has become the consummate professional at taking credit for things he never did, and for ignoring responsibility for things he did do.

    If I take this pattern to its logical conclusion, I find myself asking: Is there any physical evidence that John McCain was actually shot down by the North Vietnamese? Could he have just been hot-dogging it, nice and low and slow—and sucked part of a tree into his intake ducts? Part of a power-line to the tail-fin, maybe? Or could he have pulled the ultimate embarrassment for a combat pilot—and switched off the engine while still in flight?

    The man clearly sees himself as incapable of doing wrong. He envisions every whim as the only correct decision.

    He verily thinks himself a god among the godless hordes….

  • Well — I have a question. How many articles pointing out these salient facts have there been?

  • You didn’t expect BushBrat to actually admit defeat did you?

    Any bets on how long it will take Bush to whip out his Executive Decideration pen and cross out all the parts he doesn’t like?

  • If any veterans group supports McCain after this debacle, they’re embarrassingly ignorant. The spin is for the uninformed, which shouldn’t include anyone who has ever worn a uniform and pays attention to how the current administration has treated them.

  • “. . . the president praising McCain for his “hard work” on this bill is a special kind of stupid.” Which appeals, of course, to the special kind of stupid voters, whom I hope are not in a majority this year.

  • ‘We’re dealing with a group of people who know no shame, and will lie recklessly and without a hint of embarrassment’.

    …..and the folks who won’t want to change their mind or ways and will continue to believe what Bush says no matter how much is written against the Republican rhetoric. The republicans are very effective in getting out thir lies as absolute truths, as we all know.

  • Second, and more importantly, the president praising McCain for his “hard work” on this bill is a special kind of stupid.

    Oh what a riot!

    Almost makes me feel sorry for McCain, I mean you can’t say McCain didn’t work hard to get the GI Bill out, but poor old McCain can ONLY ever do whatever Cheney and Bushie tells him too – because all the money is attached. McCain is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. At some point I can only imagine that McCain doesn’t really care if he wins the election or not because obviously McCain won’t have any say in his Presidential politics any more than he had say in his campaign. Just like Bush, McCain would never be more than a Prez face. Sure the jobs pays $ 400 grand a year but the rigors of even campaigning will take such a toll on McCain – that it’s bound to be very bad for his health at his present age that not really worth it.

    Somehow I think, in the end, McCain’s ageing status will have been a friend to him. He is utterly unable to weild the Rove’s political cards as artfully as little Bush, because McCain never lead as deceptive a life as little Bushie, so that deceit will never come as natural to McCain as did for Bush – and thus McCain always comes off as forced, terse, mechanical, and revealing.

    McCain’s exit is bound to so ungraceful that I wonder if McCain will even be left standing as a senator after losing this election? A sad end but McCain can blame it all on his age.

  • We’re dealing with a group of people who know no shame, and will lie recklessly and without a hint of embarrassment.

    Because…the traditional media let’s them get away with it. The silence is deafening.

  • “The man clearly sees himself as incapable of doing wrong. He envisions every whim as the only correct decision.”

    But this has worked so well the last eight years, it’s now written in as the top qualification of Commander in Chief. And I just can’t wait to see McCain crash land on an aircraft carrier, swagger in front of his Mission Accomplished banner and say, “it’s just like ridin’ a bike…”.

  • Your discussion of Bush’s decision to sign the updated BI Bill is somewhat inaccurate. While he may or may not have declined to veto this bill if it stood alone, it was not a standalone bill but part of the latest Iraq supplemental funding bill (along with the unemplyment benefits extention, that Bush undoubtedlly would have vetoed on its own), so a veto would have been more problematic. Although there was no chance that a cowed Congress would have denied Iraq funding if forced to reconsider the matter on its own, the GI bill and unemployment extension were apparently agreed to by Bush as part of the FISA “compromise.”
    The main substance of your post is, of course quite correct.

  • We’re dealing with a group of people who know no shame, and will lie recklessly and without a hint of embarrassment.

    And a media that lets them get away with it.

  • We’re dealing with a group of people who know no shame, and will lie recklessly and without a hint of embarrassment.

    And the corporate media makes that possible. Without the BBQ stenographers, the public would see what’s going on and would react accordingly.

    We need media reform, until we get it we will be stuck in this position, with the forces of evil “creating the reality” and us trying to tell people what’s really happening.

  • Marlowe (13): While he may or may not have declined to veto this bill if it stood alone, it was not a standalone bill but part of the latest Iraq supplemental funding bill …, so a veto would have been more problematic.

    Actually he said he would veto the GI Bill if it was attached to the supplemental funding bill.

  • “…We’re dealing with a group of people who know no shame, and will lie recklessly and without a hint of embarrassment….”

    And get away with it when the press says nothing about it. They feel confident that they will not be confronted over their blatant lies in any meaningful way. Just pathetic.

    If a dem did this the press would run it for weeks.

  • That statement of W’s was the prefect example of the propaganda meeting the catapult. Tonight on the nightly news all across the nation that is what the corporate media will show. One Dem 4 Reps and not the actual co-sponser. Though Warner does eserve to be mentioned, the other 3 do not. In the next few days we’ll here Rep strategists talking about how the Pres and McCain love the troops and are so concerned about them that they got this bill passed. And they’ll use Bush’s list of names to “prove it”. They’ll also show McCain’s statement from last week about how “we got this passed”. And so this will pass off into conventional wisdom and be brought up over and over again before Nov, all with the help of a corrupt and complicit corporate media.

    And dear poor Chuck Hagel. He refuses to back his parties nominee, he will fade from Republican and media consciousness into obscurity and will never be given the real credit he deserves for this.

  • As I’ve said before and will certainly say again; this only matters if the MSM actually calls McCain on this outright lie. Until that happens the majority of ‘low-info’ voters will only hear the praise of the how the ‘War Hero’ tm once again came through for the troops.

  • All of the people mentioned by Bush did work on a GI Bill expansion. They just happened to support a better piece of legislation with less pork in it. Nobody was against a GI Bill expansion and that is why it passed so successfully. Unfortunately the lesser version passed, typical of what you get from democrats. I hope you all don’t hate your mother because she thought you would turn out better than you did.

  • Reminds me of nothing so much as the 2000 debates, where on a question about the issue of the Patient’s Bill of Rights, Bush talked about how “we have a Patient’s Bill of Rights in Texas.” I could sympathize with Gore not being prepped on how to respond, because no other presidential candidate in modern history had been so breathtakingly dishonest as to claim credit for a bill that not only had he had nothing to do with it, he had refused to sign it and it passed only over his veto.

    At this point, they’ve been lying shamelessly for years. The only surprise left is in guessing which things they decide are worth lying about.

  • Edo, @24,

    Thanks for checking out that website; I wouldn’t have taken the risk without your say-so — I’m leery of strangers who sound like trolls — and I’d have been a loser. The site is *a riot* and is now permanently bookmarked. Many thanks, Christina West, @20. Fantastic!

  • maybe we could start a lie.. that mccain wrecked his plane because he messed up the brake and gas. and that while captured.. he in fact gave all sorts of confidential secrets away to the vietnamese which is why we lost in vietnam.

    if these idiots can make up lies.. why cant we? oh yeah.. becasue we have morals.

  • What about McCain’s crash on the USS Forestall? I can’t remember exactly, but I believe 16 dead and McCain badly burnt.

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