I’m a Gold Star Mom. The GOP is using our veterans as political props.

I am a Gold Star mother, which means I lost a child to war. My son volunteered for the U.S. Army, serving as an intel analyst for the 7th Special Forces Group in the 82nd Airborne. He was deployed twice to Kandahar, Afghanistan, and on Jan. 8, 2016 — after waiting 16 months for treatment from the VA — he died.

The recent fight over the debt ceiling shows me just how little some Republicans care about taking care of the Americans they sent off to war. To rub salt in the wound, Republicans are willing to use veterans like my son as political props to distract from the fact that veterans benefits are being used as a bargaining chip to further a plan that could cripple our national economy.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the only federal agency dedicated to our nation’s 16.5 million veterans. As the families of lost veterans can tell you, VA funding is already woefully inadequate. Yet the GOP members, including my own representative in New York’s 17th District, Mike Lawler, voted for a default plan that could cut funding for the VA by as much as 22 percent.

While House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the GOP claim they aren’t cutting veterans benefits, they could have easily put that commitment in the bill — just as they did with Social Security. In fact, 24 veteran service organizations sent a letter to House Republicans asking them to protect veterans benefits. Republicans refused.

By not carving out an exception to protect the VA, they’ve put cuts on the negotiating table. Even if Republicans do protect VA funding, their bill threatens housing, job training, and Pell grants for veterans, as well as billions in health care funding for veterans through federal COVID funds.

If that wasn’t enough, this past week a story about homeless veterans in the Hudson Valley being displaced by migrants turned out to be completely false. But New York’s Republican reps, from Mike Lawler to Marc Molinaro to Elise Stefanik, were quick to seize on the story and use our unhoused veterans as political props. Molinaro was shameless enough to send out a fundraising email attacking Democrats for displacing veterans.

The GOP wants us to believe that they’re the party that will stand by our vets. But if McCarthy gets his way in the debt ceiling negotiations, veterans may have to wait months or years to get in to see the appropriate health professional or access housing.

What this means is that his promises of care for veterans like my son, who put their lives on the line to keep us safe, were all just lip service. 

If the cuts go through, 80,000 jobs at VA could be lost, resulting in millions fewer available appointments. I wonder if the Speaker has done the math on how many lives will be lost if this is allowed to happen. I wonder how many more mothers will bury their children because of it.

It’s shameful how many Republican members are moving in lockstep with Kevin McCarthy, even when that means hurting veterans and their families. It’s not hard to understand why. They believe that staying on McCarthy’s good side will keep the money flowing in from large donors. They don’t seem to care how their vote could impact veterans in their own districts.

The GOP talks up a good game about its support for the troops, and has no problem using veterans and military imagery to further their extreme agenda. But their default plan is nothing short of an act of betrayal.

Stephanie Keegan is an advocate for veterans after her son passed away in January of 2016 while waiting for treatment from the VA for PTSD and addiction. She is legislative director of Purple Heart Hall of Honor, Inc.