Washington’s priorities are backward — and veterans know it



When Washington shuts down, it doesn’t just stall politics — it shakes the lives of America’s veterans. At the outset of the government shutdown last month, a veteran named James called VetComm in tears. His question was simple but heartbreaking: “Will I still get paid next week? Because I can’t afford groceries if I don’t.”

James served his country with honor. Yet he worried about feeding his family because Democrats in Washington insist on prioritizing illegal immigrants over the very men and women who defended this nation.

Enough is enough. Stop putting illegal immigrants ahead of the heroes who built and defended this country.

I’ve dedicated my life to fighting for veterans like James — those who bled for this country, only to watch so-called representatives in Washington bend over backward for people who entered it illegally. With this latest government shutdown, Democrats have again slammed the door on veterans while rolling out the red carpet for illegal aliens.

A manufactured crisis

For over a month, Democrats held the entire nation hostage, demanding a $1.5 trillion, poison-pill-stuffed funding bill that includes “free health care” for illegal aliens while programs for veterans teeter on the brink. It’s not just reckless — it’s cruel. These are the same priorities that helped drive a 19% spike in veteran homelessness while illegal migrants got luxury hotel rooms on the taxpayer’s dime.

As the shutdown ends, the facts are clear. The House passed a clean continuing resolution to keep the lights on, maintain VA funding, and avoid chaos. But Senate Democrats — led by Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York — rejected it, choosing to plunge the country into an unnecessary shutdown to appease their left-wing base.

The Democrats’ alternative was loaded with giveaways: subsidies for illegal immigrants’ doctor visits, hospital stays, and “health care rights,” while hundreds of thousands of veterans remain stuck on VA wait lists — some dying before they’re seen.

Staggering hypocrisy

Schumer once said avoiding a shutdown “is very good news for the country, for our veterans … all of whom would have felt the sting.” More recently, he warned that “a shutdown would mean chaos and pain and needless heartache for the American people.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez declared, “It is not normal to shut down the government when we don’t get what we want.” Jeffries said shutdowns are "about the harm.”

Those very same politicians ended up leading one — weaponizing activist wish lists and pet projects against the GOP and the nation.

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Johnrob via iStock/Getty Images

This pattern of betrayal isn’t new. Under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, the VA was caught reimbursing health care for illegal immigrants and their families, draining resources from veterans. I’ve seen it firsthand in San Diego — hotels packed with migrants while homeless veterans sleep on sidewalks, dodging needles and despair.

Over 10 million illegal crossings have occurred under the Biden administration’s watch. The result: big money for migrants, broken promises for veterans. The audacity to continue putting invaders ahead of patriots is shocking — and unforgivable.

The real human cost

Everyone knows a shutdown hurts troops, veterans, and families. Yet Democrats embraced it anyway, in service to radical ideology over national duty. Americans overwhelmingly oppose this madness.

Enough is enough. Stop putting illegal immigrants ahead of the heroes who built and defended this country. It’s time to restore sanity and start prioritizing America again.

At VetComm, we see the toll every day. The sleepless nights. The panic over missed paychecks. The spiraling PTSD and anxiety triggered by uncertainty. Veterans have already given everything; they shouldn’t have to fight their own government for stability and dignity.

Our mission is simple: Stand in the gap for those who stood for us. We help veterans understand their rights, claim the benefits they earned, and remember that their service still matters. A shutdown tests that mission — but it also steels our resolve.

Because while Washington bickers, we will keep fighting for every veteran, every day, not just Veterans Day.

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Obamacare was never affordable — and neither is cowardice



Twelve years ago this week, the federal government shut down over a fight that should have mattered more than any budget squabble in modern history: Obamacare.

In 2013, House and Senate conservatives — led by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) — refused to fund Barack Obama’s budget unless the pending health care law was stripped of its most ruinous provisions. They warned it would crush Americans with skyrocketing premiums and limited choice.

Instead of begging Democrats for a short-term continuing resolution, Republicans should force the debate they’ve been avoiding.

They were right. And today, watching those predictions come true, the defeat still stings. Democrats always stay united on health care. Republicans, even now, act as if the issue doesn’t exist.

The lost fight

In that 2013 showdown, Republicans held the stronger hand. They controlled the House and could have passed a full funding bill minus Obamacare. The law was still unpopular, the website was collapsing, and millions were losing coverage.

Democrats had already lost more than 60 House seats and a generation of state-level power because of their support for the 2009 law. The “dependency” phase hadn’t yet taken hold, but the costs were already exploding — premiums jumped 47% in the first year alone.

Yet GOP leaders sabotaged their own side. After Cruz’s 21-hour Senate filibuster demanding a defund vote, the Republican establishment turned its fire inward.

John McCain scolded Cruz from the Senate floor for comparing the fight to World War II and calling it a “great disservice” to veterans. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) dismissed the strategy as “not a smart play.” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) warned against risking a shutdown “doomed to fail.”

Instead of hammering Democrats for creating unaffordable health care, the GOP obsessed over process. The pressure worked. On October 17, Republicans surrendered unconditionally — and Obamacare became untouchable.

At the time, I wrote:

If we are resigned to letting go of the Obamacare fight in the budget, there is no way it will ever be repealed, even partially repealed. By 2017 ... there will be over 30 million people either willingly or unwillingly dependent on Obamacare. Even if it’s barely workable, it will be the only care they have. We cannot repeal it.

That prediction also came true.

Failure by surrender

Twelve years later, after winning full control of government, Republicans still couldn’t repeal the law. Now, even with a new GOP trifecta, they’re struggling to stop Joe Biden’s insolvent expansion of it.

On paper, Democrats should have the weaker hand today. They control no chamber of Congress and are threatening a shutdown to preserve health care subsidies no one voted for.

Yet they’ve managed to frame the fight around the “cost of health care” — a problem created entirely by Obamacare itself. Republicans’ silence only amplifies the lie.

Democrats are betting that voters no longer remember why premiums exploded or why subsidies now cover nearly every enrollee. They’re counting on a GOP that can’t articulate the obvious: Obamacare made health care unaffordable and fueled the broader inflation strangling families.

Even the Washington Post recently admitted in an editorial that “the real problem is that the Affordable Care Act was never actually affordable.”

A second chance

Republicans now have the opportunity they squandered a decade ago. With control of the White House and Congress, they can finally make the case for repeal and for genuine, market-based reform.

They can remind Americans that we’re paying Cadillac prices for catastrophic coverage — massive deductibles, 33% denial rates, and bloated UnitedHealth plans protected by federal subsidy. They can expose the system for what it is: a monopoly masquerading as compassion.

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Photo by JDawnInk via Getty Images

Instead of begging Democrats for a short-term continuing resolution, Republicans should force the debate they’ve been avoiding. Health care can’t be fixed by tinkering at the edges. It must be freed from Washington’s grip.

Twelve years ago, Republicans claimed they lacked the leverage to stop Obamacare. Today, Democrats have no leverage at all — and they’re the ones complaining about the costs of their own creation.

God doesn’t hand out many second chances, especially in politics. Republicans just got one. They’d better use it.

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Russell Vought’s quiet war on big government



The government is shut down again, and the usual panic is back. I even had someone call my house this week to ask if it was safe to fly today. The person was half-joking, half-serious, wondering if planes would “fall out of the sky.”

For the record, the sky isn’t falling — at least not literally. But the chaos in Washington does feel like it. Once again, we’re watching the same old script: a shutdown engineered not by fiscal restraint but by political brinkmanship. And this time, the Democrats are driving the bus.

This shutdown may be inconvenient. But it’s also an opportunity — to stop funding our own destruction, to reset the table, and to remind Congress who actually pays the bills.

Democrats, among other things, are demanding that health care be extended to illegal immigrants. Democratic leadership caved to its radical base, which would rather shut down the government for such left-wing campaign points than compromise. Republicans — shockingly — said no. They refused to rubber-stamp more spending for illegal immigration. For once, they stood their ground.

But if you’ve watched Washington long enough, you know how this story usually ends: a shutdown followed by a deal that spends even more money than before — a continuing resolution kicking the can down the road. Everyone pretends to “win,” but taxpayers always lose.

The Vought effect

This time might be different. Republicans actually hold some cards. The public may blame Democrats — not the media, but the people who feel this in their wallets. Americans don’t like shutdowns, but they like runaway spending and chaos even less.

That’s why you’re hearing so much about Russell Vought, the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget and Donald Trump’s quiet architect of a strategy to use moments like this to shrink the federal bureaucracy. Vought spent four years building a plan for exactly this scenario: firing nonessential workers and forcing reauthorization of pet programs. Trump talks about draining the swamp. Vought draws up the blueprints.

The Democrats and media are threatened by Vought because he is patient, calculated, and understands how to leverage the moment to reverse decades of government bloat. If programs aren’t mandated, cut them. Make Congress fight to bring them back. That’s how you actually drain the swamp.

Predictable meltdowns

Predictably, Democrats are melting down. They’ve shifted their arguments so many times it’s dizzying. Last time, they claimed a shutdown would lead to mass firings. Now, they insist Republicans are firing everyone anyway. It’s the same playbook: Move the goalposts, reframe the narrative, accuse your opponents of cruelty.

We’ve seen this before. Remember the infamous "You lie!” moment in 2009? President Barack Obama promised during his State of the Union that Obamacare wouldn’t cover illegal immigrants. Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted, “You lie!” and was condemned for breaching decorum.

Several years later, Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform openly promised health care for illegal immigrants. What was once called a “lie” became official policy. And today, Democrats are shutting down the government because they can’t get even more of it.

This is progressivism in action: Deny it, inch toward it, then demand it as a moral imperative. Anyone who resists becomes the villain.

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Photo by Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images

Stand firm

This shutdown isn’t just about spending. It’s about whether we’ll keep letting progressives rewrite the rules one crisis at a time. Trump’s plan — to cut what isn’t mandated, force programs into reauthorization, and fight the battle in the courts — is the first real counterpunch to decades of this manipulation.

It’s time to stop pretending. This isn’t about compassion. It’s about control. Progressives know once they normalize government benefits for illegal immigrants, they never roll back. They know Americans forget how it started.

This shutdown may be inconvenient. But it’s also an opportunity — to stop funding our own destruction, to reset the table, and to remind Congress who actually pays the bills. If we don’t take it, we’ll be right back here again, only deeper in debt, with fewer freedoms left to defend.

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The budget hoax that nearly sank Trump’s biggest win (so far)



Conservatives are celebrating a once-in-a-generation legislative triumph with the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4 by President Trump. But the victory almost didn’t happen — thanks to what can only be described as the “budget hawk hoax,” a long-standing tactic used by phony conservatives to block meaningful reforms from becoming law.

The heart of this hoax is that the overriding problem facing America is “the deficit crisis” — and that nothing else on the conservative agenda can ever be moved forward until we deal with it.

Too many conservatives have fallen for the 'budget hawk hoax' for far too long.

But when the conversation turns to cutting wasteful spending, these same so-called budget hawks introduce a poison pill: the notion that the only serious way to reduce the deficit is by gutting Social Security and Medicare — before touching any other government waste.

They know this is a nonstarter — and we all know it’s a nonstarter — because there is no way voters will ever allow Nana’s Social Security to be cut while we’re still using taxpayer money to fund LGBTQ+ programs in Nepal and Botswana.

The impossible dream?

Even worse, the faux-conservative “budget hawks” have generally dismissed any efforts to cut other wasteful government spending, insisting that it would have been a mere insignificant drop in the bucket. Yet when President Trump tried to secure $5 billion in funding for the border wall in his first term, budget hawks protested that we couldn’t afford it.

When the Trump administration began dismantling corrupt NGOs under USAID, legacy “conservative” media scoffed at the effort because it didn’t yield massive dollar savings. Yet if we don’t eliminate such foundational waste first, long-term entitlement reform has no credible path forward.

The truth is, of course, that Conservatism Inc. was just desperately trying to protect the corrupt status quo, keep left-wing spending in place, and deny any spending that advances the conservative agenda.

The same old playbook was rolled out again with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Critics labeled it “budget-busting,” but that claim was misleading. The bill didn’t increase spending. In fact, it prevented a scheduled tax hike that would have rolled back Trump-era tax cuts and restored pre-2017 rates.

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BackyardProduction via iStock/Getty Images

To be fair to the bill’s critics, the history of omnibus bills is fraught with corruption. Typically, omnibus bills have been legislative horse trades: Republicans secure pork for their districts, and Democrats secure massive expansions of the welfare state. But the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is different. It actually slashes major government spending in ways that align with long-standing conservative demands.

For instance, the $7,500 federal incentive for electric vehicle purchases is set to expire almost immediately. Under the old playbook, such a subsidy would have increased in exchange for some infrastructure funding in a red district. Not this time.

By trying to defeat the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, “budget hawks” were actually striving to protect and perpetuate the following left-wing agenda items, all in the name of “fiscal conservatism”:

  • A massive tax increase, restoring Obama-level tax rates.
  • Allowing able-bodied Medicaid recipients to continue taking welfare without being required to work.
  • Maintaining all the federal EV rebates and green energy incentives, which are designed to deny Americans the right to affordable energy and reliable transportation.
  • Blocking border security by denying funding for the border wall, additional detention centers, and additional Border Patrol staffing.

It’s even more obscene when you consider the enormous cost to taxpayers of providing social services for illegal aliens — services the “budget hawks” are trying to save — while also perpetuating open borders because “we can’t afford” measures to seal the border.

Too many conservatives have fallen for the “budget hawk hoax” for far too long, accepting that we cannot have any conservative victories so long as we have a national debt. Perhaps that day has finally ended.

Yes, our country’s fiscal crisis is real, and it will persist. But forsaking any victories over the left because of the deficit is not a matter of high principle. It’s simply surrender.

The “budget hawks” will never be able to fix the deficit. They don’t want to. But given the chance, they would continue to use the issue to prevent real conservatives from ever passing useful legislation.

The hoax failed

They lost this round — and thank heaven for that!

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act stops income tax hikes in their tracks. It strips funding from Planned Parenthood, rogue judges notwithstanding. It shuts down the EV grift. It tightens border security and reins in Medicaid fraud.

This is what winning looks like — and the self-styled “budget hawks” hate it. Why? Because it derails the left’s agenda and puts the public back in charge.

Credit goes to President Trump and Speaker Johnson for delivering this landmark victory. And to Stephen Miller — relentless as ever — for making sure the truth broke through.

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