(NewsNation) — Comedian Jon Stewart unleashed a bevy of harsh words for Republican senators after they killed a bill that would have provided aid to Iraq war veterans who were exposed to toxic smoke at waster burn pits in the Middle East.

“Boy they haven’t met a war they won’t sign up for and they haven’t met a veteran they won’t screw over,” Stewart said to reporters on Thursday.

Republicans were reportedly concerned that the bill in its current form could overwhelm Veteran’s hospitals around the country, according to Emily Jashinsky of The Federalist.

“I think it’s plausible that concerns about overwhelming V.A. facilities, if those are coming from certain veterans groups that have looked at this and said ‘hold on, this might need some tweaks so that we don’t overwhelm the facilities’… that seems plausible to me,” Jashinsky said on NewsNation’s “On Balance: With Leland Vittert.” “I am not going to endorse that position, but it doesn’t seem like ‘abject cruelty’ as Jon Stewart put it. That’s a visceral reaction, and an understandable one.”

Civil rights attorney Robert Patillo called Republicans’ logic “malarkey.”

“For a party that loved to run around with the flag of our nation wrapped around them, with bald eagles, calling themselves ‘patriots,’ I find it particularly abhorrent what they’ve done,” Patillo said on the show.

The full discussion with Patillo and Jashinsky can be viewed in the video above.