Afghan War Vet Blasts ‘Empty Suit’ Sen. Toomey Over Burn Pits Bill: ‘Everything He Said’ Was a ‘Bald-Faced Lie’
Senior Adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America Matt Zeller did not hold back in his criticism of Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) on At This Hour with Kate Bolduan Monday morning, blasting the senator for his vote on the burn pits bill, calling him an “empty suit,” and saying that he had refused to help the Afghan interpreter whom Zeller credits with saving his life.
CNN anchor Kate Bolduan brought on Zeller to discuss the stumbles in getting the bill passed. The debate over the bill has moved from the Senate floor to the television airwaves, with Toomey and other Republicans defending their votes against the bill as objections to a “budget gimmick” and Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) refusal to allow amendments, and Democrats and comedian Jon Stewart arguing that more veterans were dying every day while the bill was delayed.
Bolduan asked Zeller, who has been protesting on the Senate steps for days since the bill failed to pass if he thought the bill would still move forward “despite the setbacks” and what it meant if it “falls apart.”
“Simply put, veterans are going to die,” Zeller replied. “We know of two veterans that killed themselves because of their despair because they don’t think they will get the health care.” Those suffering from these cancers had been forced to mortgage their homes to afford their medical treatments, he said.
“We’re going to stay here because we’re doing this for the people who died and who are dying, and we’ll do this most importantly for the people who will die if we don’t do this now,” he added.
Bolduan asked Zeller for his reaction to a video clip of Toomey explaining his objections to the bill, in which the senator called it the “oldest trick in the book” to “take a sympathetic group of Americans” and “craft a bill to address their problems, and then sneak in something completely unrelated that they know could never pass on its own and dare Republicans to do anything about it because they know they’ll unleash their allies in the media and maybe a pseudo-celebrity to make up false accusations to try to get us to just swallow what shouldn’t be there.”
Zeller responded that he had his “own personal beef with Pat Toomey for about a decade,” explaining that he was “only alive today because my Afghan interpreter saved my life in a battle,” and that same interpreter assisted Toomey on a CODEL (an official congressional delegation visit), “and when I asked his office to help out, the man wouldn’t lift a finger.”
“He doesn’t care about veterans,” Zeller insisted, ” and I’ve known that for over a decade. Listen, everything he just said to you is a bald-faced lie…he doesn’t want us to have our health care.”
Zeller took issue with Toomey’s objection to the bill’s classification of the expenditures as mandatory spending, saying that the senator’s effort to change it to discretionary spending would mean “they can take it away from us at any time.”
“If it was your health care, for the folks watching at home, is that how you would want to receive it, the idea that it might not be funded next year? Your cancer is not going away, so why should your health care?”
“That man needs to get out of office,” Zeller said. “He’s just an empty suit. At this point, he’s helping veterans die.”
Watch the video above, via CNN.
