[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 97 (Tuesday, June 7, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2798-S2801]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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
[[Page S2799]]
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.