Rep. Madison Cawthorn, a Republican in North Carolina who has a history of serious false claims, posted another Twitter post Sunday.
Cawthorn has criticized a new $ 86.9 million federal contract to house some migrating families in hotel rooms while awaiting legal action to remove them from the US. (Other migrant families are quickly suspended without a court process.)
‘The Biden Admin has just dropped $ 86 million dollars to get hotel rooms for ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, but we have no dollars to go to our homeless veterans who are at high risk for suicide. UNACCEPTABLE. UNAMERIKAAN, ‘Cawthorn wrote.
Facts first: Cawthorn was not even nearly correct about federal spending on homeless veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs will spend ‘more than $ 2 billion’ in the 2021 financial year to support veterans who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless, Department spokeswoman Terrence Hayes said in an e-mail. pos said. US rescue plan president Joe Biden, pandemic relief law, signed this month – which Cawthorn voted against – offers itself substantial funding to address domestic insecurity, in general and among veterans in particular.
Kathryn Monet, chief executive of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans Nonprofit, said Cawthorn’s ‘zero dollars’ claim was ‘absolutely untrue’. Tom Porter, executive vice president for government affairs at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Advocates, said it was “simply not true”. Porter added that the U.S. bailout plan contains “an enormous amount of money for veterans” and that it is important for officials to be “accurate” with government spending as veterans listen.
Cawthorn’s office said he could not speak on the record about the tweet because it came from the congressman’s Twitter account, not from his official congressional account. But a source close to Cawthorn, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the tweet was actually an allegation that zero dollars of this particular ICE contract to house migrants was going to homeless veterans – not, in other words , an allegation that the government is spending zero dollars on homeless veterans.
But Cawthorn did not make it clear at all. If he wanted to say that zero dollar of an immigration contract not related to veteran homelessness goes to veteran homelessness, he could say it explicitly – even though it would make the tweet sound rather bizarre. The words Cawthorn actually tweeted give the impression that he was talking about the government’s overall spending on homeless veterans.
To spend billions
According to the federal government’s annual homelessness determination, there were 37,252 veterans who were homeless once in January 2020. This is a decrease of almost 50% from the 2009 figure, but a slight increase from the 2019 figure.
The VA’s base budget for fiscal 2021 allocates about $ 1.9 billion to homelessness of veterans. (Here are some details on what the VA is doing for homeless veterans.) The VA said in its fiscal budget plan for 2021 that it plans to spend another $ 313 million on veteran suicide prevention programs.
The VA plans to spend $ 10.2 billion in fiscal 2021 on mental health services. Although it is not specifically spent on suicide, it does help prevent suicide.
Federal spending on homeless veterans is not just limited to the VA. The Department of Labor, for example, manages the Homeless Veterans Reintegration Program, which provides more than $ 50 million a year for an initiative aimed at helping homeless veterans find and retain jobs.
In addition to these budget allocations, approved in 2020 by former President Donald Trump, the pandemic bills signed by Trump in 2020 and Biden in 2021 provided millions of extra funds to address homelessness among veterans. Cawthorn, who took office in January 2021, joined his Republican colleagues in voting against Biden’s $ 1.9 billion bailout plan.
The U.S. rescue plan includes $ 14.5 billion in veteran health care, broadly defined. Hayes, the VA spokesman, said part of that money – he said he could not yet provide a specific dollar figure – would fund extensive transitional housing, smartphones and other health and support services to veterans who are homeless or with the danger of homelessness. Hayes said that “these extensive services under the CARES law have helped an estimated 37,000 veterans,” the bill Trump signed in March 2020.
The U.S. rescue plan includes a $ 386 million program to pay for retraining and housing assistance for up to 17,250 veterans who became unemployed due to the pandemic. Porter, of the group of veterans in Iraq and Afghanistan, called the housing allowance “generous” and “significant.”
The U.S. bailout plan also includes broader provisions that could help, among others, veterans dealing with housing challenges – such as more than $ 21 billion for rental assistance, $ 10 billion for mortgage assistance, $ 5 billion in emergency housing and nearly $ 5 billion for assistance homelessness. And there is $ 4 billion for the prevention and treatment of mental health and drug abuse.
Cawthorn seemed to suggest that the Biden government put some migrants in hotel rooms, but it is noteworthy that migrants were sometimes placed in hotel rooms under Trump as well. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement to CNN on Saturday that the $ 86.9 million contract with a Texas-based organization, Endeavors, has 1,239 beds – plus health assessments, Covid-19 testing and processing services – to migrant families who crossed will provide. the border with Mexico. Reuters reported that these migrants would ‘initially’ stay in seven different branded hotels’; ICE and Endeavors would not provide more information to CNN.