Rep. Miller-Meeks to Newsmax: WH Lying About Bill’s Vet Spending

The White House is lying with its claims that the House bill to raise the federal debt limit while cutting costs would make deep cuts to the nation’s veterans program, and the administration is trying to use veterans as “pawns” rather than negotiate with House Republicans, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks said on Newsmax Saturday. 

“The administration encouraged [Veterans Affairs] Secretary [Denis] McDonough to just send out information to veteran service organizations that their veterans’ benefits could be cut,” the Iowa Republican said on Newsmax’s “Saturday Agenda.” 

Miller-Meeks, a retired lieutenant colonel, is also on the House Committee on Veterans Affairs. She insisted that there is “no line item that they can point to that says veterans’ benefits are cut.”

But still, the administration continues “to spin this web of lies.” And if veterans’ organizations contacted the administration, it’s only after they sent them false information and lies that veterans’ benefits were being cut.

Republicans are pushing back against the White House’s claims, claiming that there is “no line item that specifically says they’re not cutting veterans’ benefits,” said Miller-Meeks. “What they’re trying to do is deplorable. Their actions are unconscionable.” 

She added that the administration is attempting to use veterans “as a ploy and a pawn, because they don’t want to sit down and negotiate.”

“If they think veterans’ benefits are being cut, sit down with [House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy, and do your job,” said Miller-Meeks. “Negotiate. We have done our job responsibly and pragmatically, and we have raised the debt limit so the country does not go into default. Now the ball is in the president’s court.”

Meanwhile, the administration is planning to end the Title 42 pandemic health policy enacted when former President Donald Trump was in office to expel migrants, and Miller-Meeks said the House has voted and passed an extension of the policy under the guise of the pandemic “created by the fentanyl crisis.”

“The CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention], The Washington Post, major newspapers who are not conservative or Republican-friendly have called the fentanyl and opioid crisis an epidemic, so we think Title 42 should continue because of the fentanyl crisis,” said Miller-Meeks. “We know the majority of that is coming across the border. Most of it is not intercepted.”

The administration has also installed a new regulation that requires migrants be denied asylum if they come through another country to enter the United States if they didn’t request protection in the country they crossed, but Miller-Meeks said that won’t be enough to handle all the immigrants that have been amassing at the border. 

Also, the move means reimplementing a Trump policy that was already in place under Trump, she said. 

“Even blue states are saying they can’t handle the number of illegal immigrants coming in,” she said. “We have a tremendous crisis at the southern border, and we’re seeing an influx at the northern border. We have got to get border security … our bill next week will be on border security. We have got to get it passed, and we’ve got to get the administration to acknowledge the crisis they have created.”

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