Republican rips into vets jobs bill

WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 (UPI) -- A senior Republican U.S. senator Wednesday dismissed a veterans jobs bill put forward by Democrats as just political posturing.

"What we're really doing is passing a bill for political reasons that's not going anywhere in the (U.S.) House so that we can say we're doing things," The Hill quoted Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., as saying on the Senate floor.

Coburn said the bill didn't go through the committee process and the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hasn't investigated whether current veterans jobs programs work before proposing a new system, The Hill reported.

"Is this about veterans or is this about politicians? I suspect it's about politicians and not veterans," Coburn said.

The newspaper said the proposed Veterans Jobs Corps Act is designed to create new job-training programs to help veterans find work. The programs include training in such fields as national park conservation, historic preservation projects, police work and firefighting.

The cost of five-year bill is $1 billion, but it generates new revenue to pay for itself over 10 years, The Hill said.

The Hill said Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., are leading the effort to pass the legislation, and some suggestions by the committee's ranking member, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., were being included in the measure.