In a speech to the American Legion today, Mitt Romney leveled fresh criticism against President Obama, accusing his administration of cutting the benefits of veterans who are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan and going so far as to call plans to cut the Veterans Affairs Department budget a “crisis.”:

Romney charged that the defense budget cuts would affect services for veterans, including the men and women returning from conflict overseas who need psychological counseling. Romney invoked the rising number of suicides – “This is a crisis,” he declared – as he sharpened his attack on the Obama administration’s proposed spending cuts.

But Romney’s claim — that veterans’ care will be negatively impacted by sequestration — is not grounded in reality. Earlier this month, the White House announced that virtually all of the Veterans Affairs Department budget will be exempt from mandatory cuts if and when sequestration goes into effect in January 2013. The only exception, according to VA Secretary Eric Shinseki, would be possible cuts to administrative costs. That means health care, vocational, and education services will remain fully funded while cuts are made elsewhere within the Department of Defense, despite Mitt Romney’s claims to the contrary.

Of course, if Romney were actually concerned about the possibility of losing funding for the Veterans Affairs Department, he probably wouldn’t have embraced Paul Ryan or his budget, which could lead to reductions in veterans’ benefits.

Senate Republicans prevented a veterans’ jobs bill from coming to a vote today by forcing a budget point of order vote. Democrats came up 2 votes short of the 60 needed to defeat the GOP’s budget measure.

The Veterans Jobs Corps bill — which is part of President Obama’s push to secure jobs for veterans — would have provided $1 billion over five years to hire 20,000 young veterans for public lands jobs and prioritize vets for first responder jobs such as police, firefighter, or EMT. The measure would have also provided young vets access to the infrastructure with which to assist in job searches, such as access to computers, internet and career services advisers.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a vets group that supported the legislation, called the GOP move “a huge disappointment,” adding, “Today, politics won over helping vets.”

While only five Republicans voted with the Democrats to waive the GOP budget point of order measure, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) led the GOP opposition. “When we find ourselves in $16 trillion of debt and we pay for a five-year bill over 10 years, we make the problem worse,” he said.

However, Veterans Jobs Corps bill co-sponsor Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) said on the Senate floor today that “this bill is fully paid for and does not violate pay-go rules.” (The New York Times said Murray’s aides say “say the program will be paid for by recovering more money from tax-delinquent Medicare providers and forcing big tax deadbeats to pay up before receiving passports.”)

Murray even tried to include most of the provisions of a competing Republican bill but Democrats still ran into opposition. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he would block the measure until the Pakistani doctor that aided the CIA in looking for Osama bin Laden was freed, while Coburn claimed the bill would have no chance of passing the House so it wasn’t worth the effort.

“I’ve been surprised at the many obstacles and weird arguments that have been thrown at us,” Murray told the Washington Post.

The jobless rate for Iraq and Afghanistan war vets, while steadily declining, is still higher than the national average, yet congressional Republicans remain “resolute in their commitment to deny the Democrats anything that looks like an accomplishment in an election year.”

In an editorial last weekend referring to today’s vote, the New York Times said, “We’ll know then whether good sense prevailed, or the wheels have come completely off the Congressional machine.” It looks like the Republicans have made sure of the latter.

Even as the national unemployment rate ticked up ever so slightly in July, the unemployment rate for veterans fell to its lowest level in more than three years, dropping to 6.9 percent. That figure is the lowest monthly unemployment rate for all veterans since before President Obama took office.

The Obama administration has championed legislation aimed at reducing the unemployment for veterans, including the passage late last year of tax incentives to businesses that hire veterans and signing an executive order to help as many as 126,000 veterans receive certification and training necessary for various manufacturing jobs around the country. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, 25,000 of the new jobs added in July were in the manufacturing sector.

The unemployment rate for veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars remained higher than the national unemployment rate, but it too appears to be trending in the right direction. The July unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans was 8.9 percent in July, the lowest it’s been since February, and just the second time the figure has fallen below 9 percent since December 2009:

Three retired special operations officers have started a new political action committee aimed at, as a recent fundraising email states, “remov[ing] Barack Obama from office.” The swift-boat style group, Special Operations Speaks, will try to achieve this goal by highlighting “what they see as unforgivably security leaks by President Obama and his team.” The email, signed by retired SEAL captain Larry Bailey, continues:

Let me lay it on the line: Barack Obama’s loose lips are doing worse than sinking ships – they’re putting our entire nation at risk.

And if you and I don’t get this man out of office, he’s going to destroy our military, undermine every ally we have, and arm our enemies to the teeth.

It’s interesting then, that the group’s website promoted a Fox News article yesterday reporting that current U.S. Special Operations commander Adm. William McRaven, while warning about national security leaks, praised Obama as a “fantastic” commander-in-chief:

Indeed, talking with CNN’s Wolf Blizter at the Aspen Security Forum this week, McRaven said, “we’re never happy when leaks occur obviously,” but the Special Operations commander never pinned any blame on the president. In fact, as the article SOS promoted notes, McRaven praised Obama:

BLITZER: What kind of commander in chief is he?

MCRAVEN: The president of the United States is fantastic. And, again, I am not a political guy. I have worked in both administrations. I very, very much enjoyed working for President Bush, and I very much enjoy working for President Obama. … This is about a commander in chief who I have the opportunity to engage with on a routine basis, and watching him and the decisions he makes, along with his national security team. They’re a very impressive group of guys and gals.

Watch the clip:

If you’re a group of former special ops officers and your goal is to kick President Obama from office on national security grounds, it’s probably not the best idea to promote stories reporting the top American special operations officer calling President Obama a “fantastic” commander-in-chief.

Mitt Romney delivered a major foreign policy address this week before the Veterans of Foreign Wars. While the speech was notable for lacking in substance and facts, Romney also ignored one important constituency sitting before him: veterans.

Romney did warn that spending cuts “would weaken an already stretched VA system” but that was about it, leading one VFW official to point out that Romney hasn’t laid out any specifics of how he’d deal with veterans issues, Reuters reports:

But many veteran advocates are still waiting for Romney to spell out how he would do better than his opponent.

“We haven’t … heard any specific plans yet from Governor Romney or his campaign,” said Bob Wallace, executive director at the Washington office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, echoing the sentiment of many advocates.

Indeed, Romney hasn’t said what he would do for the nation’s veterans should he become president. He created a “Veterans Policy Advisory” group but it hasn’t issued any policy recommendations to the public. Romney dabbled in veterans issues late last year when he proposed privatizing the VA system but retreated from that position after receiving considerable backlash from veterans groups.

Reuters said it asked the Romney campaign for more information but “the campaign provided a single-page document” that lacked any concrete proposals.

By contrast, in his speech before the VFW this week, President Obama announced an overhaul of job training and transition services for veterans returning from war. Reuters said in a separate report today that life for veterans has “grown more challenging under Obama’s watch,” but CAP’s Lawrence Korb and Alex Rothman noted in February that “Obama has made much progress in tackling veteran unemployment” while urging Congress to pass the president’s $6 billion vets jobs corps program. In March, Obama announced a housing plan to help military vets who were victims of illegal foreclosures and First Lady Michelle Obama said that companies had pledged 15,000 jobs for military spouses as part of the administration’s “Joining Forces” program. (HT: Lauren Jenkins)