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Both Wisconsin Senators Vote For VA Bill

Johnson Had Voted Against Previous Version Of Bill, Saying It Would Harm The Budge

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Sen. Tammy Baldwin voted for the new bill, but said that she wished an older version had passed. Photo: Senate Democrats (CC-BY).

A three-year $17 billion overhaul of the Department of Veterans Affairs will be sent to President Barack Obama after the Senate passed it on Thursday night. Both Wisconsin senators voted for the bill, but call it flawed.

A more comprehensive and much more expensive VA bill almost passed both houses earlier this summer, but it stalled when Republicans called it a budget buster. Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson (D-Wisc.) cast one of only three “no” votes in the Senate then. This time, he voted “yes.”

“I can’t get everything I want, so like I said, I’m not going to let perfect be the enemy of good,” Johnson said. “This is vastly better than the $430 billion bill that I voted no on.”

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He added: “I didn’t vote no against the vets. I actually voted for our future generations. We have to stop mortgaging their future.”

This bill allows veterans to get private health care if they live more than 40 miles away from a VA facility or can’t get an appointment within 30 days. It also creates more telemedicine and mobile vet centers. Johnson said the competition with the private sector will force the VA to improve.

While Johnson puts most of the blame for issues within the VA on the Obama administration, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) said part of problem is that Congress didn’t act much earlier as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars wound down.

”You can absolutely blame the Congress for not recognizing that significant additional resources needed to be allocated to the VA to be able to keep up,” Baldwin said. “I mean, these should be viewed as direct costs of war.”

She said she would have liked to have seen the first bill passed instead of this one.

“I guess I’m sad that some of the provisions there haven’t made it through to this bill, which was much more a result of a shocking scandal,” she said.

This bill also pays for more doctors, nurses and staff at VA clinics.