“Isn’t that a bitch?” Stewart said Thursday at a news conference on Capitol Hill. “America’s heroes, who fought our wars, outside sweating their asses off, on oxygen fighting all kinds of ailments, while these motherfuckers sit in air conditioning locked up for nothing? No they have to hear it. They don’t have to see it. They don’t have to understand that these are human beings. Have you got it yet?”
“And if this is America First, then America is screwed,” he said.
Stewart, speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead,” later said of the lawmakers: “I’m used to the lies. I’m used to the hypocrisy. I’m used to their cowardice. I’m not used to the cruelty. casual cruelty … a bill they had fought for for more than a decade.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Stewart earlier during the press conference lied to veterans by saying “we’re going to get it done” and then voting against the bill. Stewart also criticized Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican who is retiring at the end of his term.
“Pat Toomey didn’t lose his job. He’s leaving,” Stewart said. “God knows what kind of pot of gold he’s getting into to pressure this government to go down with more people. I’m used to it all, but I’m not used to cruelty.”
Stewart apologized for his foul language, but then described what the senators were voting against, with one veteran saying the bill “gives them health care, gives them benefits, lets them live from becoming addicts, it prevents veterans from killing themselves.”
“Senator Toomey won’t hear it because he won’t sit down with this man because he’s a king coward. Do you hear me?” Stewart said. “None of them will hear it. And none of them will care.”
“What makes the gut punch so much more devastating is that all these people came here so they could finally tell the men and…” Stewart said off camera before the press conference, stopping in mid-sentence and snapping. “His constituents are dying. And will they do it after recess? Don’t tell their cancer to take a break, tell their cancer to stay home and visit their families.”
Stewart told Tapper of a veteran who “attempted to take his own life because of his desperation with this system and this process of being denied care.”
“And these guys, they act like, ‘Oh, don’t worry. Maybe now we’ll get to it, maybe we’ll get to it in the lame duck session. “Some of these people won’t be there,” Stewart continued. “They live scan to scan. So they can pretend they’re on Senate time, but these other people are on human time. And that time is precious.”
The goal, Stewart said, is for congressional lawmakers to stay on Capitol Hill until the bill passes.
“When you fight for this country, you can’t leave until the mission is complete, until your job is done. They don’t let you leave. And we believe that the Senate must fulfill the oath that the men and women who fight for this country must live up to it,” he said.
Toomey declined to comment on Stewart’s earlier criticism, saying, “It’s not worth responding to.” He denied as “absurd” that objections to the bill were spurred by Democrats to reach a separate deal on a reconciliation bill.
When asked for a response to Stewart’s comments, a McConnell spokesman pointed to his remarks from Thursday morning. McConnell said he supports the “substance of the bill,” but added that “even with such important and costly legislation, the Democratic leader tried to block the Senate from any semblance of a fair amendment process “.
McConnell argued that the legislation as written “could also allow Democrats to effectively spend the same money twice and allow hundreds of billions in new and unrelated spending on the discretionary side of the federal budget.” He pushed for a vote on a Toomey amendment aimed at reducing package costs.
An earlier version of the legislation passed the Senate on an 84-14 vote in June, but Senate Republicans voted overwhelmingly against a procedural vote Wednesday night that would have ended debate on the bill law and would pass it for final approval, with 25 Senate Republicans who supported the earlier version of the legislation voting against the procedural vote.
“This is complete bullshit,” said Democratic Sen. Kristen Gillibrand of New York. “This is the worst form of overt politicking I have ever seen. This is total BS. We have the votes.”
Gillibrand says she will seek unanimous consent Thursday if she can get time at the table, “and as many times as I need to bring it up again.”
“We had strong bipartisan support for this bill. And at the 11th hour, Senator Toomey decides he wants to rewrite the bill,” he said. “How he got 25 of his colleagues to change their vote, I have no idea. What the hell? How does that happen? How do you change your mind right when you’re about to make a law that will save lives ? It doesn’t make sense. It’s an outrage and there must be accountability.”
Susan Zeier, the mother-in-law of the late Sgt. 1st Class Heath Robinson, for whom the bill is named, called out Republican senators who voted against the bill Wednesday night.
“Senator Rob Portman was Heath’s senator,” Zeier said. “They voted against my family. They voted for us all to suffer.”
“They don’t give a shit about veterans. And like someone said before, everybody has pictures with veterans on their Facebook pages on their website, because they don’t support veterans. If you voted against this bill , they don’t support veterans,” he said. “I’m done. And next time I’m back here, I better sign the damn bill into the White House.”
A Portman spokesman told CNN that the Ohio Republican plans to vote on final approval of the bill, as he did during the original vote in June, but on Wednesday voted against the procedural motion as in order to register his displeasure along the way. The democratic leadership had managed the amendment process.
Pelosi said Republicans’ decision to abruptly change course last night is “very hard to explain. It has an immorality that 80 percent of Republicans would say no to.”
“We all share the dismay and all of that,” Pelosi said. “We’re not going to stop until the job is done. I don’t know what we can do to convince the Republicans to do the right thing.”
The legislation had been negotiated between Senate Veterans Affairs Chairman Jon Tester, a Democrat from Montana, and the committee’s top Republican, Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas. After the failed vote, Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said Republicans supported the bill, but there was an agreement for two amendment votes and that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, “disowned that,” sparked the uproar.
“The leadership of the Democratic Party, Senator Tester, Senator Moran, agreed that there would be two amendments, Senator Schumer agreed to the same thing. And then they reneged on that,” Cornyn said.
Cornyn said Republicans hope to reduce mandatory spending in the final package, now that the bill is in limbo.
“This bill will eventually pass, but it will be more fiscally responsible,” he said.
“My view was that this has to happen. I want it to happen. I want to do everything I can to see it happen sooner rather than later. And I was willing to wait to try to correct the problems that I see with the legislation,” Moran said Thursday before. “And not all of my colleagues agree with this strategy.”
Stewart rejected Republican assurances that the bill would eventually pass.
“All cowards. All of them,” Stewart said. “Now they say, ‘Well, this will be done.’ Maybe after we come back from summer vacation, maybe during the lame duck,” because they’re on Senate time. Do you realize you live around here? Senate time is ridiculous. These moms live to be 200. They’re turtles. They live forever and never lose their jobs and never lose their benefits and never lose all that stuff. Well, they’re not on Senate time. They You’re on human time. Cancer time.”
This story was updated with additional news on Thursday.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Susan Zeier.
CNN’s Manu Raju, Ted Barrett, Morgan Rimmer and Shawna Mizelle contributed to this report.