No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Here's how House Republicans support the troops in a time of war: by demoting and embarrassing the leading advocate for soldiers on Capitol Hill.

The crackdown on GOP moderates continued last week as the House leadership ousted Representative Chris Smith as chairman of the Committee on Veterans Affairs for his tireless advocacy of veterans rights. Smith--like House Ethics Chairman Joel Hefley--did his job a little too well.

Smith served on the Vets Committee since arriving in Congress twenty-four years ago and became its chairman in 2001, angering the GOP top brass with his opposition to stingy VA budgets and ability to pass bills across bipartisan lines. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay--who wanted Smith punished two years ago--got his wish when House Speaker Dennis Hastert inserted GOP poodle Steve Buyer as Chairman and took the unprecedented step of throwing Smith off the Vets Committee. (Ironically, Smith is also a major figure in the anti-choice movement.)

Under a rule change adopted in 1995, Hastert can remove any committee chairman he deems incompetent or disloyal--now code words for bucking conservative conformity. During his four-year tenure, Smith authored twenty-two bills benefiting veterans: increasing veteran education funding through the GI bill by 46 percent, allocating $1 billion for homeless vets and $1.4 billion for expanded healthcare programs, and providing an extra $100 million in benefits for surviving spouses.

"It's almost as if no good deed goes unpunished," Smith told the Trenton Times. "In Baghdad, when somebody's bleeding, they're not Democrat or Republican. This is one committee that should have nothing to do with politics." Even Republican operative Bob Novak put fury to paper in a column yesterday. "The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House," Novak wrote.

A top Republican aide justified his party's brutish behavior by praising Smith's replacement, the fiscally hawkish Buyer, as someone who'll be able to "tell the veterans groups, 'Enough is enough.'"

Abused and misused troops should throw those words back in the GOP leadership's face.

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