Jon Stewart Blasts GOP Senators Blocking Veterans Bill — Stop Nonsense ‘Parliamentary F–kery’

[WARNING: Adult Language]

Comedian Jon Stewart said Thursday on CNN’s “The Lead” that Republican senators who didn’t vote for the PACT Act, which would expand health care access to military veterans exposed to toxic chemicals from burn pits, are using “parliamentary fuckery.”

Stewart said, “If you want to talk about slush funds, if Senator Toomey wants to explain his fiscal conservatism, why it is that he voted, you know, every year we vote for what’s called the OCO, a $70 billion fund that goes on top of the $600 billion or $700 billion that the Pentagon already gets, and it’s unaccountable. There are no guard rails. It truly can be spent on pretty much whatever they want to spend it on it. Toomey’s never raised a peep about it. Never raised his hand. He’s never objected. He’s never held up the defense bill because of it.”

He continued, All of these individuals that voted to deny the veterans and the health care they’ve been fighting for, for 15 years, voted for this slush fund. So they’re lying. A, you can’t just spend this money on whatever you want to. And B, when there have been billions in expendable money that they can spend whatever they want to, they vote for it. So this is nonsense.”

Stewart added, “These guys, they act like oh, don’t worry. Maybe we’ll get to it now or in the lame duck session. Some of these folks won’t be around. They live scan to scan. So they can pretend to be on Senate time, but these other folks are on human time. And that time is precious. You know, Senate time, these guys all live to be 200 years old. They never lose their jobs, always get their health care. Nothing matters to them. Nothing penetrates that bubble that they live in of procedural bullshit.”

Discussing talking to senators about the bill, Stewart said, “When we walk into the offices, they’re on the phone with people. The first office we went into was Marshall of Kansas. Yes, he does support it. So we get a legislative people to come out. You know that Senator Marshall was one of the first supporters of this. Great, so why did he turn it down? We have to fix the budget issue? What’s the budget issue? Because he voted yes when that budget issue was in it the first time, so what’s it about it now? Well, there wasn’t the energy behind it? I don’t know what that means. What are you fucking talking about? Seriously? What kind of nonsense. I’m standing with people on oxygen tanks. Do they understand that you know, CHIPS and reconciliation, and all these things, they’re real people who face tragic consequences for their parliamentary fuckery.”

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