May is National Military Appreciation Month. Designated by Congress in 1999 to honor past and present military members and their families, the month includes several commemorations, including Loyalty Day, VE Day, Military Spouse Appreciation Day, Armed Forces Day and, of course, Memorial Day.

But are Republicans in Congress AWOL when it comes to taking care of the troops and our nation’s security?

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the past several weeks, you know that Republicans continue to insist they will not vote to raise the debt ceiling. That’s the legislative limit on the amount of money our nation can borrow to pay its bills unless President Joe Biden agrees to large spending cuts.

The federal government is expected to exhaust its borrowing ability in June. But Kevin McCarthy and his band of MAGA brothers and sisters are ready to shut down the government. Their brinkmanship with their irresponsible debt ceiling proposal is the latest insult to those who have served — what national security analysts call geopolitical malpractice.

“In a fit of pique, the world’s most powerful country could both damage the global economy and erode a key source of its own strength,” writes economist Filippo Gori in Foreign Affairs.

Veterans groups have also raised serious questions about the potential impact of the GOP bill, and the Department of Veterans Affairs has warned that discretionary spending cuts would affect benefits for veterans.

Republicans have emphatically stated they will not reduce funding for defense or veterans, but veteran groups have been down this road before and aren’t buying the GOP’s assurances.

“Over the past few years, VA has seen significant advancements in veteran health care and benefits,” states a letter signed by 23 veteran organizations. “If enacted, the proposed legislation would dramatically reduce total federal discretionary spending and could endanger funding for VA and veterans’ programs. Without specific language to explicitly protect VA from the impact of proposed budget reductions, it would leave many veteran resources open to cuts, potentially undoing years of progress VA has made for those who have earned it.”

The Military Order of the Purple Heart strongly attacked the Republican plan.

“The VA is already underfunded, and cutting its budget will only exacerbate the problem, resulting in longer wait times, reduced services and decreased access to care,” Christopher Vedvick, the group’s national commander, said in a statement to the Stars and Stripes, the independent military newspaper.

And then there’s Tommy Tuberville, whose biggest accomplishment before becoming a U.S. senator was coaching football. In Alabama, that apparently makes him uniquely qualified to interfere with the command structure of our military and mess with the reproductive rights of 230,000 female service members.

He’s holding up nearly 200 military promotions in protest of the Department of Defense’s policy to ensure women in the military can be reimbursed for travel expenses from bases in states where abortion is banned or restricted.

Tuberville doesn’t care that female service members do not choose where they are posted or that 1 in 4 service women report being sexually assaulted, with actual numbers thought to be much higher.

At a time when the military branches are having a tough time with enlistments, Tuberville could also care less that more service women will be forced to separate from service due to unwanted pregnancies.

“Y’all got the American taxpayer on the hook to pay for travel and time off for elective abortions,” Tuberville said to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. “Congress will write the laws — not the secretary of defense, not the Joint Chiefs.”

Last week, seven former defense secretaries who served in administrations from both parties, called him out, saying his standoff is creating real-world impacts on the lives of military families and on our national security.

“We can think of few things as irresponsible and uncaring as harming the families of those who serve our nation in uniform,” the former secretaries wrote in a letter.

So is that how it works today for the Grand Old Party? The party that was once the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower? The party that used to be the “pro-military” party? Now it’s the Trump party of Taylor Greene, Tuberville, and Ted Cruz.

In their orbit, it has nothing to do with national security or finding common ground. Their orbit is controlled by the MAGA faction, the “Freedom Caucus,” which wants to cut and slash anything considered wasteful or “woke,” their favorite catch phrase.

For the MAGA GOP, it’s all about tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations so they don’t have to pay their fair share, even if that means not stepping up for those who have served and protected our country.

And the majority of all Republicans still claim Jan. 6, 2021 was “legitimate political discourse.” Their standard bearer, after all, continues to glorify and heroize those who rioted.

“Our people love those people,” former President Donald Trump said at his first rally of his 2024 presidential campaign, speaking of those jailed for the Jan. 6 attack. “What’s happening in that prison, it’s a hellhole … these are people that shouldn’t have been there.”

This month in the name of patriotism, you’ll see Republicans waving the flag and singing the anthem, all while they dance on the Constitution, cause worry among veterans and create a national security threat where none should exist.

That’s the Grand Old Party in 2023 – the party of hypocrites.

John Paradis, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, lives in Florence. ]]>