It's not about being punitive. It's about finding resources to deliver goodies to your voters. Democrats have plenty of spending priorities. They're also, at least now, cognisant of the electoral impact of inflation. That means no more trillion-dollar deficit packages, but finding places to cut. Republicans have the poor. Democrats had deficits; if they can't figure out how to pass tax increses on the wealthy or corporations, that only leaves cuts, and the first place to start is where people who will never vote for you (and are already turning out to the opposition) live.
Hence next cycle. Nobody will say they’re punishing veterans. The pitch will be increasing efficiency at the VA, and the reason to fund e.g. the energy transition or some other Democratic priority. Hell, the GOP might wind up going along with it to pay for their tax cuts and border priorities.
I think they have plenty of appetite to tax the wealthy and corpos... and we're possibly seeing the first stirrings of a new populist backlash to the billionaire bros. If D's can ride that wave back to power, they'll have a mandate to stick it to the uber rich.
B/c honestly, Musk, Theil, Adreessen, et al, through their recent actions, are making the argument that billionaires shouldn't exist much more effectively than Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders ever could.
Democrats do a lot of things deeply wrong, but they seem to exhibit punitive behavior like this a lot less than their Republican counterparts. Republicans pay a lot of lip service to veterans but actual GOP legislation in favor of them is sparse at best