Sometimes pointing out the hypocrisy and shamelessness is just too easy:

Frist: Veterans May Have to Sacrifice

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist pledged Tuesday to support veterans concerned about President Bush's health care proposals, but also said veterans and others will have to make sacrifices should the nation go to war with Iraq....

...he later told reporters that the costs of the Iraq war would mean "we all have to sacrifice in various ways as we likely engage in military conflict, which we could not have anticipated a year ago, which is not fully budgeted and which ultimately will have to compete with what many of us want.

"It applies to me in terms of domestic priorities and it applies to groups like the veterans today as they lobby," Frist said.

...Bush proposed a 7.7 percent increase, to $27.5 billion, for veterans' medical care in the fiscal year starting Oct. 1. But the budget request also proposed fee increases and limits on access, which are unpopular with veterans and have been rejected by the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

Bush's budget also proposed charging veterans who earn about $24,000 a year or more an annual enrollment fee of $250. And it proposed increasing copayments for higher-income patients, from $15 to $20 for outpatient primary care and $7 to $15 for prescription drugs....

--Newsday

House Panel Enlists Military Bill In Cause of Business Tax Breaks

Days before the House Ways and Means Committee took up an innocuous military bill last month, Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) made an offer to other Republican committee members at their weekly luncheon: prepare a wish list of tax breaks under $100 million each, and they could add them to the measure.

"It was Mr. Thomas's idea," said panel member Jim McCrery (R-La.), adding that Democrats declined the same offer. "Everybody in the meeting agreed there were a lot of little tax items we had not [been able to enact] the last couple of years. This was something that was going to move."

...If the House accepts the committee's version, and it survives an eventual conference committee with senators, then racetrack owners and horse breeders would have an easier time enticing foreigners to bet on their races; an alternative type of diesel fuel would get a tax break, and U.S.-made bows and arrows would sell for less....

--Washington Post