Yesterday, President Bush signed legislation that included Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) 21st Century GI Bill. In his signing speech, Bush praised himself and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for “work[ing] hard” to pass the legislation:
The bill is a result of close collaboration between my administration and members of both parties on Capitol Hill. … I want to thank members who worked hard for the GI Bill expansion, especially Senators Webb and Warner, Graham, Burr, McCain.
In reality, Bush and McCain “worked hard” to block the GI Bill. As Webb countered yesterday on MSNBC’s Countdown, “Neither of them really did get on board.”
“I think it’s safe to say there was a good deal of cooperation between Republicans and Democrats. It just didn’t include the administration,” Webb said with a chuckle. He added that Bush “blew it”:
I think George W. Bush made a real bad mistake in terms of our trying to show full respect for military service. I think he blew it.
Watch it:
Webb also noted that in his speech yesterday, Bush did not thank Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE), who had a central role in the bill’s passage.
Previous in TP Politics
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.