[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 97 (Tuesday, June 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2797-S2801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                               Inflation

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the White House has apparently decided to 
spend June focusing on the economy.
  President Biden kicked things off with an op-ed in the Wall Street 
Journal entitled ``My Plan for Fighting Inflation.''
  Before he gets to the actual ``plan,'' though, the President spends 
the first half of the op-ed touting his supposed economic successes. As 
usual, he takes credit for the economy's recovery from COVID-related 
woes, even though the recovery was well underway before he became 
President and was a natural result of the economy reopening after COVID 
shutdowns.
  He touts job creation figures without mentioning the fact that 
businesses are struggling to find workers to fill jobs. He touts the 
number of new small business applications in 2021 without mentioning 
that small business optimism is at its lowest level since April 2020 at 
the height of the pandemic shutdowns. And he mentions ``millions of 
Americans getting jobs with better pay,'' while leaving out the fact 
that inflation continues to outstrip wage growth, meaning that, on 
average, Americans are experiencing a de facto pay cut.
  In all, he spends multiple paragraphs attempting to convince 
Americans that the economy is thriving, which I have to think feels 
pretty meaningless to the millions of Americans struggling with massive 
increases in the cost of gas, groceries, and other everyday goods.
  In fact, a poll released yesterday found that just 27 percent of 
Americans believe they have a good chance of improving their standard 
of living, and it is no wonder. The President can talk about his 
supposed economic achievements all he wants, but that means little to 
Americans who have seen their disposable income eaten up by price hikes 
or whose raise failed to keep even pace with the increase in the cost 
of living.
  And, of course, the President completely omits the fact that it was 
his economic plans that helped create our current inflation crisis in 
the first place. When President Biden took office, inflation was at 1.4 
percent, well within the Federal Reserve's target inflation rate of 2 
percent. Today, it is at 8.3 percent, near a 40-year high.
  And how did we get from there to here? In substantial part, via the 
President's so-called American Rescue Plan. Democrats' massive partisan 
spending spree flooded the economy with unnecessary government money, 
and the

[[Page S2798]]

economy overheated as a result. But that is not something the President 
mentions when he talks about fighting inflation.
  So what is the President's so-called plan to fight inflation?
  Well, after spending half the op-ed touting his supposed economic 
successes, the President finally gets to the plan part, and the first 
part of his three-part plan involves having someone else address 
inflation. Controlling inflation, the President says, is primarily the 
job of the Federal Reserve, and he is going to leave them alone to do 
that job.
  The next part of the President's plan involves things like fixing 
broken supply chains and boosting the productive capacity of our 
economy over time.
  Now, I am a big supporter of improving our supply chains, which is 
why I have introduced the Ocean Shipping Reform Act, which, hopefully, 
will pass the House of Representatives and head to the President's desk 
soon. But given that the President has so far demonstrated little 
progress in addressing supply chain challenges, I am not holding my 
breath waiting for the White House to take action.
  I am also a big fan of boosting the productive capacity of our 
economy. My concern is that the President fails to give any examples of 
how he might actually do that. He mentions high gas prices, but instead 
of talking about ways to address high energy prices by unleashing 
American energy production, he pivots to touting his release from the 
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, a highly temporary band aid that did next 
to nothing to address the cause of high gas prices, except for briefly 
causing their rise to what are record highs.
  He also claims Congress can help by passing his clean-energy tax 
credits and investments--which he says would result in a $500 decrease 
in utility bills for American families. First, nothing about the 
President's clean-energy tax credits is likely to drive down energy 
prices, especially in the near term, and Americans can't afford to 
wait.
  In fact, for Americans to take advantage of some of these credits, 
they would need to spend more money--on an electric car, for example--
which is how the administration suggests Americans deal with these 
historic gas prices.
  And the President's claim that his energy tax credits and investments 
would decrease utility bills for American families by $500 is 100 
percent false.
  And you don't have to take my word for it. The Washington Post Fact 
Checker column gave the President's claim four--four Pinocchios--a 
rating that the Post reserves for, and I quote, ``whoppers.''
  And if the President has the idea that his tax credits can somehow 
magically move the United States to a place that we can abandon gas and 
oil overnight, well, he has another thing coming. No matter how much 
Democrats might wish it were otherwise, the fact of the matter is that 
clean energy technology has simply not advanced to the point where we 
can replace all traditional energy resources with renewables. And 
pretending--pretending that we don't need gas and oil--or discouraging 
American oil and gas production will only result in higher energy 
prices for American consumers.
  If the President really wanted to reduce gas prices and ``boost the 
productive capacity of our economy over time,'' as he said in his op-
ed, he would embrace American energy production, including conventional 
energy production.
  Instead, he is doing the opposite. He continues to discourage 
domestic production of conventional energy sources that Americans rely 
on. And the result is likely to be continued high energy prices well 
into the future.
  Finally, the President turns to the third part of his plan to fight 
inflation, and that is reducing the deficit. Unfortunately, it is a 
little hard to take the President seriously on this issue. The 
President touts a Congressional Budget Office prediction that the 
deficit will fall by $1.7 trillion this year.
  What the President doesn't mention is that the reason this year's 
projected deficit drop looks so substantial is because Democrats 
inflated the deficit last year with their American Rescue Plan spending 
spree. Of course, the deficit will look lower this year without a 
massive $1.9 trillion piece of legislation financed entirely with 
deficit spending.
  And I am not getting my hopes up about future deficit drops, since 
many Democrats still want to use reconciliation rules to force through 
another big, party-line Democrat spending bill. This one is $5 
trillion. If they come up with a proposal that is anything like their 
original Build Back Better proposal, we will undoubtedly be looking at 
more deficit spending.
  One news outlet had this to say about President Biden's op-ed and his 
plan to reduce the deficit:

       Is it really a `plan' when the President points fingers? 
     While the president's op-ed purports to lay out a plan for 
     addressing inflation, a close read shows that he actually 
     seems to be pushing the burden off on others . . .

  That is a fair assessment. Unfortunately, it is pretty par for the 
course for President Biden. He is happy to take credit for positive 
economic numbers even when he had nothing to do with them, but when it 
comes to taking responsibility for a situation, he is frequently 
nowhere to be found.
  He won't acknowledge that his own economic proposal, the American 
Rescue Plan, helped create our inflation crisis in the first place. 
Indeed, he largely ignored the inflation crisis until it started to 
become absolutely necessary for him to address it, if he wanted to 
survive politically.
  And he has displayed a similar lack of ownership of crises on his 
watch. The actions he has taken to weaken border security and 
immigration enforcement have helped create an unprecedented immigration 
crisis on the southern border.
  But from the President's attitude you barely even know that there is 
a problem, much less one that he has a particular responsibility to 
address.
  His hostile attitude toward American energy production helped drive 
up gas prices and left families struggling--struggling--to fill their 
cars. Yet the President is ready to push off responsibility for 
conventional energy production to other nations, leaving our Nation 
less secure and even more vulnerable to price spikes.
  The President closes his op-ed by noting:

       The economic policy choices we make today will determine 
     whether a sustained recovery that benefits all Americans is 
     possible.

  Well, the President is right about that. Unfortunately, it is pretty 
clear that the economic policy choices that he is making are wrong.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Rosen). The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. TESTER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                            PACT Act Of 2021

  Mr. TESTER. Madam President, today is an important day. This is the 
day that we are going to take up toxic exposure in the U.S. Senate. It 
is a day that, quite frankly, should have been two decades ago, three 
decades ago, five decades ago, but we are where we are.
  The bill we are going to be considering is the SFC Heath Robinson 
Honoring Our PACT Act. This bill is the most comprehensive toxic 
exposure package for veterans Congress has ever considered and 
hopefully I can say has ever delivered. It has literally been years in 
the making.
  I am especially proud of this bill because it addresses decades of 
inaction and failure by our government to do the right thing by the men 
and women who have served this country in uniform and stood in harm's 
way.
  I want to thank my friend and ranking member of the Senate Veterans' 
Affairs Committee, Jerry Moran, for being able to work together across 
the aisle to deliver what is truly a bipartisan bill that will give 
veterans of all eras the benefits that they have earned but maybe even 
more importantly, the benefits that they deserve.
  As chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, there have 
been few issues as important as this one is to me. It has been a top 
priority of mine since I first came to Congress and started hearing 
from veterans, their families, their advocates, and veterans service 
organizations about exposures

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to chemical, physical, and environmental hazards as they serve this 
country in the line of duty. So let's talk about military toxic 
exposures and why we are here today.
  In World War I, there was a thing called mustard gas. In World War 
II, we had radiation. In Vietnam, we had Agent Orange. Now we have burn 
pits--massive areas used to dispose of plastics, rubber, jet fuel, and 
other chemicals in Iraq and Afghanistan and other locations around the 
globe.
  Generation after generation, war after war, servicemembers have 
returned home, only to face yet another battle here at home when 
seeking the care and the benefits that they have earned and that they 
desperately need because Washington--we, Congress--has been unwilling, 
simply unwilling to give the Department of Veterans Affairs the tools 
they need to take care of our veterans. Our men in uniform answered the 
call of duty. They held up their end of the bargain, so we need to hold 
up ours.
  I will never forget what I heard from a Vietnam veteran in Montana my 
very first year on the VA Committee. I was holding a townhall meeting. 
This gentleman stood up in the back of the room at the townhall, and he 
said: You are not going to treat this generation of veterans the way 
you treated us, the Vietnam veterans.
  I remember it because it hit home with me. I remember those Vietnam 
soldiers coming home. I remember the stories of toxic exposure to Agent 
Orange. I remember how we knew what we needed to do, but, man, it took 
us a long time to get stuff done. In fact, we still are dealing with 
Agent Orange, and it is dealt in this bill with hypertension.
  But here we are today treating this generation of veterans just like 
we treated the Vietnam veterans and other generations of veterans who 
have served this country. As a result of turning a blind eye on the 
needs of our veterans, they have died, they have died, and they have 
died due to toxic exposure.
  Here are the facts. More than 3\1/2\ million post-9/11 veterans may 
have been exposed to toxic substances overseas during their time in 
uniform. Seventy-five percent of those men and women report being 
exposed to burn pits. As a result of these exposures, many veterans 
suffered from rare, deadly cancers, respiratory conditions, and other 
illnesses--let me say it again: rare but deadly cancers and respiratory 
conditions and other illness--sometimes developing years after they 
served in the military.
  Now, it is easy for me to stand up here and talk about cancer--I 
don't have it; at least I don't think I have it--and talk about 
respiratory conditions. I don't have to gasp for air. But the truth is, 
because of these men and women's service to this country in the Middle 
East and their exposures to toxins, they have developed these illnesses 
or if what happens with all the past ones, they will develop them in 
the future. Because of that, today, hundreds of thousands are going 
without the care and the benefits they need to treat these conditions.
  By the way, we are still not addressing Agent Orange for veterans 
suffering from conditions like hypertension, where the science is 
clear, and in the worst cases, folks are paying with their lives.
  Veterans and heroes like SFC Heath Robinson, for whom this bill is 
named--Heath deployed to Kosovo and Iraq with the Ohio National Guard, 
was exposed to burn pits, and he died. He died in 2020 from toxic 
exposure. SFC Heath Robinson--he was a son; he was a husband; he was a 
father. In fact, we heard from his daughter this morning at a press 
conference that Senator Moran was at--a beautiful little girl who, in 
her words, said: I love my dad. But yet we didn't step up. The country 
failed to deliver for him, and we also failed to deliver for his 
family. The situation has happened with far, far, far too much 
regularity, and that is why we are here dealing with this bill.
  The SFC Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act will right the wrong for 
our past, for our present, and for our future veterans. Here is how it 
is done:
  This bill will expand eligibility for VA healthcare to more than 3\1/
2\ million combat veterans exposed to burn pits since 9/11.
  By the way, when I was in Afghanistan and we were flying around with 
my good friend Jim Webb when he was in this body, we flew to the bases 
based on the smoke coming out of these burn pits.

  The toxic exposure was real, it happened, and it happened to 3.5 
million combat veterans exposed to since 9/11.
  It will support our post-9/11 and Vietnam-era veterans by removing 
the burden of proof for 23 presumptive conditions caused by toxic 
exposure, from cancers to lung disease. It will also establish a 
framework for the establishment of future presumptions of service 
connection related to toxic exposures. What does this mean? It means 
that we have had toxic exposures for over 100 years and maybe even 
before that, and it has taken an act of Congress to get these folks the 
benefits they need. Now we are giving the VA the mechanism to deal with 
toxic exposure.
  It will give the VA the tools it needs to bolster its workforce, to 
establish more healthcare facilities, to improve claims processing, and 
to better meet the immediate and future needs of every veteran our VA 
serves.
  The bottom line is, this bill is far too important for this country 
and for those who fought to protect it.
  When it comes to our fighting men and women, when it comes to sending 
our folks off to war, we never talk about money; we just do it because 
we think it is the right thing to do. They are coming back. This bill 
is going to cost $287.6 billion over 10 years, so it is a big-ticket 
item. But the fact is, we sent them off to war. We told them we were 
going to take care of them when they came back home. There shouldn't be 
a debate about the money.
  I would agree that we should try to figure out ways to pay for as 
much stuff in this body as we can, but the truth is, freedom is not 
free. There is a price to pay when we send our men and women in uniform 
to fight wars on our behalf, and you don't have to be a veteran or be 
exposed to Agent Orange or burn pits to understand that price.
  We have been waging war for far too long, and now, right now, 
veterans across this country are the ones paying for that cost of war, 
and we can't wait any longer. No more empty promises. We have a unique 
opportunity to make history with the passage of this comprehensive 
toxic exposure package that will recognize our veterans' service and 
their sacrifice. We are too close to fail. It is time for this body to 
act. It is time we address the true cost of war. Our Nation's veterans 
and their families are counting on it.
  I want to close with one thing. This is a big bill. I have been in 
this body long enough to know that if there is a big bill, you can 
always find a reason to vote against it, and you can always find a 
reason to vote for it. This is more important. If we are going to take 
into account the future of our fighting men and women, the future of 
this All-Volunteer military we have, the future of the people who have 
been hit by toxic exposure, the future of our Vietnam veterans with 
Agent Orange exposure, this is too important to find a reason to vote 
against it. This is doing right by our fighting men and women in this 
country. This is doing right by our military. This is doing right for 
freedom and democracy.
  Our Nation's veterans deserve this, and maybe just as important, our 
Nation's veterans' families deserve passage of this bill.
  With that, I will yield the floor to the ranking member, Senator 
Moran.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Kansas.
  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak up to 
whatever additional minutes necessary for me to complete my remarks 
before the 11:30 vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I certainly rise this morning, going into 
this afternoon, in advance of a vote on a motion to proceed, a cloture 
vote, on the SFC Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address 
Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022, and I would call upon my colleagues 
to do the same thing.
  I appreciate what I just heard from the chairman of the Senate 
Committee on Veterans' Affairs and how he made the case for why this is 
important legislation and why we have little excuse not to see its 
success here in the next few days.

[[Page S2800]]

  I mentioned last night when I spoke on the Senate floor that I am not 
a veteran. I mentioned that my experience in high school in seeing 
those who are just a year or two older than me returning from their 
service in Vietnam caused me to reach a conclusion that I would do 
everything I could in my life to compensate for the ill treatment those 
men and women returning from service in Southeast Asia received from 
their fellow Americans. I was going to pay respect. I was going to 
honor them. I was going to say thank you. That is what a 16-year-old 
kid thought he should do to make certain that we compensate for those 
who served our country and deserved something better than what they 
received.
  I never envisioned being a Member of the U.S. Senate, never thought 
that was something that would happen to me in my life, but because I 
now serve in this capacity, I have an obligation to do much more than 
saying thank you. There is nothing wrong--it is a good thing to tell 
those who served ``Thank you. I appreciate your service. I respect 
you,'' but that is just the beginning.
  Certainly, as a member of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and 
a Member of the U.S. Senate, I and all my colleagues owe those who 
served in Vietnam and every other battle of our Nation more than just 
saying thank you.
  My guess is that nearly all of us, the 100 of us, probably said these 
words at services across our States on Memorial Day weekend. We have 
said it hundreds of times: ``Thank you for your service.'' I will 
continue to say ``thank you for your service'' hundreds and hundreds of 
times myself.
  But this week we have the opportunity to do something significantly 
more and that is to actually provide the benefits that men and women 
who served in Vietnam and who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and around 
the globe--the benefits they are entitled to and the benefits which 
they desperately need.
  We were with a group of veterans--certainly a group of veteran 
organizations--this morning on the Capitol lawn, and, to my knowledge, 
every veterans service organization, every organization that represents 
veterans is asking us to pass this legislation. But I also was 
surrounded by family members and veterans themselves who have 
experienced horrendous circumstances in their lives and their families' 
lives as a result of exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam and toxic burn 
pits in Iraq and Afghanistan.
  And you can see the challenge that people face in their lives because 
of their service. And we no longer have the capability, if we ever did, 
to say: No, we can't help you yet; we will wait for--we will wait for 
more science, more medicine; we will wait until the Department of 
Veterans Affairs completes another study.
  We can't wait because they can't wait.
  During my time at home over that Memorial Day weekend, a Navy veteran 
said he and his father were both exposed to toxic exposures in their 
service to their country and, to their knowledge, they have no 
consequences, no physical ailments that resulted from that. But they 
said: Every day we worry about it because we don't think--we don't know 
that if we do develop those symptoms, that the Department of Veterans 
Affairs and, really, the American people are going to be there to take 
care of us. So every day of our lives, knowing that we have been 
exposed to toxic substances during our military service--every day we 
wonder, if something does develop, what is going to happen to our 
spouse? what is going to happen to our kids? what is going to happen to 
me, the person who served, if we don't know that the VA, the Department 
of Veterans Affairs, is going to be there with the benefits that we 
need to care for ourselves, our health, and our family members?
  The bill that we take up today is a culmination of years of work, and 
people across the country have come to their Congress over those years, 
knocked on our doors, made phone calls, and asked us: Please do 
something to take care of someone we love who has been exposed to these 
terrible substances and causing death and ill health in their lives.
  So, across the Senate, many of us have introduced legislation over 
those years, legislation in recent years, and with the leadership of 
our Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, we had begun the process of 
sorting out bills that our colleagues were asking us to pass to deal 
with toxic exposure, and now we have combined the best of those pieces 
of legislation from many Members of our Senate, members of our 
committee, into the Heath Robinson Act.
  We have incorporated important fixes to the House version of this 
bill. We have worked to make sure the mitigation--this has been one of 
my concerns from the beginning is how do we take care of a lot more 
veterans who desperately need to be cared for and not disadvantage 
other veterans who are already waiting in line for services at the 
Department? And we have worked to mitigate, to reduce, to eliminate 
those disruptions in VA operations.
  We have streamlined the disability claims process for toxic-exposed 
veterans. We have prescribed a lasting framework for the future VA 
decisions that is transparent and driven by scientific evidence, all 
with the effort and hopefully the consequence of not negatively 
impacting veterans already in our system. This lasting framework is a 
win for veterans, requiring the VA to be proactive in evaluating 
diseases for service connections.
  We have had the opportunity, over a long period of time, to say: 
Well, the VA has the authority to take care of you. That really wasn't 
a very good explanation because it never seemed to happen fast enough, 
and in the process of us waiting on the Department of Veterans Affairs 
to act, more and more service men and women became ill and too many 
died waiting for a result.
  With this bill before us today, we are called to act for veterans, 
and we should answer that call. The Heath Robinson Act is a solution 
for a problem that has plagued veterans for too long and left way too 
many families either uncertain about whether they would be cared for or 
actually left them without the care they desperately need. This is a 
responsible approach to fix a broken system that has been cobbled 
together through decades of patchwork fixes. As we all tried to do 
something, we never got enough accomplished. But we tried, and we have 
put this patchwork system together that has failed those who need our 
help. This legislation is our chance to make certain that future 
generations of toxic-exposed veterans can get the healthcare and 
disability compensation that they deserve without delay.

  Every member of the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs has voted 
for the original bill in front of our committee, now nearly a year ago. 
The bill was passed out of committee with the understanding that 
Senator Tester and I would work to find some fixes to problems that 
people recognized. In my view, both Republicans and Democrats had 
concerns about certain aspects of this legislation, and we have now 
spent the last year and particularly the last several months trying to 
fine-tune this bill in a way that certainly reduces some damage and 
fixes the process, increases the assets in personnel and resources that 
the Department of Veterans Affairs has for determining disability 
claims and for providing healthcare for those who serve. This is a 
better bill as a result of our efforts, and I thank Chairman Tester and 
my committee colleagues for their partnership and work to get us where 
we are today.
  There was a lady on the Capitol lawn this morning in the group that 
Senator Tester and I spoke to, and she was telling me that her husband 
was exposed to toxic substances in the Middle East, that he is 
experiencing growing symptoms of challenges as a result of that 
exposure. He is waiting to see whether this bill passes, and he is 
hoping that even if he is the last veteran alive to see the legislation 
passed that he will have accomplished something that is important for 
him because he will pass knowing that the problems he is creating for 
his family due to his service are being addressed.
  There is sadness in that, that one who is challenged by these 
conditions wants to know that we have done our job so that he can know 
he has done his job as a father and a husband. Today begins the day in 
which we can demonstrate that we are capable of doing our job, and I 
ask all of my Republican and Democratic colleagues to join me

[[Page S2801]]

in supporting this historic bill for our veterans today and for the 
generations of veterans to come.
  I yield the floor.