GOP senator slammed for being lone holdout blocking veterans’ health bill — by David Edwards and Daniel Tencer

Sen. Tom Coburn is taking political heat this week for blocking a vote on a bill that would significantly expand access to health care for American veterans, despite broad bipartisan support for the measure.

Using a Senate procedure known as a "hold," Coburn (R-OK) has single-handedly stopped the Caregivers and Veterans Omnibus Health Services Act of 2009 from moving forward, and in the process exposed himself to accusations of hypocrisy, acting "illogically" and acting "shamefully."

The bill is designed to address the health needs of at least some of the roughly 1.5 million US veterans who are not currently covered by the military's health system. It would also provide assistance to veterans' caregivers.

Coburn argues he cannot allow the bill to proceed because it doesn't address how its $3.7-billion tab will be paid for. The Oklahoma senator is known as a fierce fiscal conservative, but critics of his move to block the veterans' bill say he is acting hypocritically, because he has in the past voted in favor of emergency war spending bills that had much larger tabs than the vets' bill.

"Sen. Coburn's rule on that, of course, did not constrain him from voting for funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that made this veterans' bill necessary," MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said Wednesday night. "Funding for wars that wasn't offset by anything."

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posted by the Thomas Paine Project