Senate approves budget for veterans programs

By GottaLaff

True bipartisanship:

The Senate on Tuesday adopted the latest in a continuing series of major budget increases to provide medical care for veterans.

The move came as the Senate passed, by a rare 100-0 vote, a $134 billion spending bill for veterans programs and military construction projects. Even the most ardent spending hawks and foes of the congressional practice of earmarking pet projects to lawmakers' districts and states voted for the legislation. [...]

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that 419,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will be covered by VA health care by next year — a 61 percent increase over 2008 levels — at a cost of $2.1 billion.

And a bonus:

Also Tuesday, the Senate killed an amendment by Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., that would have barred the Obama administration from either building in the U.S. a new prison to hold detainees from the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison or upgrading an existing facility to hold them.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who's advocating bringing Guantanamo detainees to a largely vacant state prison in rural Illinois, rallied colleagues against the amendment and said it made no sense to bring prisoners from Guantanamo to the U.S. but not be able to spend money to make U.S. facilities safer.

Once in a blue moon, they get it right.