A bill enhancing health care and disability benefits for millions of veterans exposed to toxic burn pits is expected to win final approval in the Senate on Tuesday, ending a brief stalemate over the measure that had infuriated advocates and inspired some to camp outside the Capitol. President Joe Biden has pushed for the legislation, saying the measure “makes good…
“Wait a minute. You’re not going to help our veterans because we want to lower the cost of prescription drugs, because we want to lower the cost of health care, because we want to protect the planet? Of course you don’t agree with any of those things, but would you use that to vote against our veterans?” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a press conference last week. “It’s really immoral, almost criminal.
Second, the legislation directs the VA to presume that certain respiratory illnesses and cancers were related to burn pit exposure, allowing veterans to obtain disability payments to compensate for their injury without having to prove the illness was a result of their service. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnam War era veterans and survivors also stand to benefit from the legislation. The bill adds hypertension, or high blood pressure, as a presumptive disease associated with Agent Orange exposure. The Congressional Budget Office projected that about 600,000 of 1.6 million living Vietnam vets would be eligible for increased compensation, though only about half would have a severe enough diagnoses to warrant more compensation.
When the CBO scored the bill, it projected that nearly $400 billion spent on VA services would take place as mandatory spending rather than discretionary spending. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan fiscal watchdog, said a reclassification to mandatory would “both reduce the pressure to keep those costs under control and make it easier for appropriators to spend more elsewhere in the budget without offsets.
Advocacy groups for veterans, a key voting bloc in the upcoming midterm elections, were furious and ramped up the political pressure on lawmakers to act.
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