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Dick Storey
Maybe some of the following statements explain the ostensible $400 billion over 10 years: maybe. Sorry, the text is a bit long.
It does not seem the democrats addded $400 billion to the bill. Looks more like political maneuvering and buerocratic accounting/budget speak to me.
A group of senators is using veterans as pawns and are engaged in political game-playing with veterans’ lives (said decorated Marine Vietnam veteran, Mike Lawson in the Montana Standard newspaper today). He said this vote is “unconscionable” and retaliation over an unrelated Democratic bill that was passed.
Legion: Senate action on PACT Act ‘absolutely unacceptable’
The American Legion website, seen today
https://www.legion.org/veteranshealthcare/256457/legion-senate-action-pact-act-%E2%80%98absolutely-unacceptable%E2%80%99
The American Legion and other veterans advocates gathered in Washington, D.C., today to criticize a Senate vote that again has delayed passage of what is known as the PACT Act.
The Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act – which has passed in both the House and Senate – received technical corrections and went to a procedural vote in the Senate on Wednesday. The 55-42 vote failed to meet the 60 votes necessary to advance the legislation.
Speaking for The American Legion during a Thursday press event on Capitol Hill, American Legion Legislative Director Lawrence Montreuil called the delay “absolutely unacceptable. A bill that passed the House of Representatives three times and passed the Senate with wide-ranging bipartisan support – 84 senators voting in favor of it – will now be delayed, and once again veterans will suffer.
“The PACT Act passed the House and Senate in a bipartisan manner, yet this delay continues because of political games. There is no reason this bill should not be signed by the president by the end of next week.”
Montreuil said the delay impacts toxic-exposed veterans who already have had to wait long enough for their care and benefits. ..................................................
U.S. Sen. Jon Tester, chairman of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs: “We’ve got to get out. We’ve got to call. We’ve got to have your friends in the military and veterans call, your civilian friends call. Because what happened yesterday is totally unacceptable. What happened is they voted against the men and women who fight for this country who want to come back to civilian life and have a normal life. And not only those folks, but their families.”
Fox New website seen today
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sen-pat-toomey-holds-final-approval-burn-pit-veterans-aid-package-citing-spending-concerns
Toomey rips Dems trotting out ‘pseudo celebrity’ Jon Stewart to ‘make up false accusations’ about veteran bill
Despite a historic Senate vote in June for approval of a new bill that would provide millions of veterans treatment for illnesses associated with their exposure to burn pits, one senator is holding up the final signing into law by President Biden — flagging concerns over the spending involved.
The Senate voted 84-14 last month in favor of the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022. The bill, which was passed with a majority vote in both the House and Senate, represents the most comprehensive veteran health care reform to date, establishing a presumptive service connection for veterans made gravely ill after inhaling toxic fumes that hung over their bases overseas, including in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The bill went back to the House, which recently passed a revised version, but further passage has been delayed after Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., spoke out against the bill saying an additional amendment on provisional spending needed to be added.
"Senator Toomey has blocked it. And now he wants to introduce amendments completely rewriting the way that it's paid for out of some false and very convenient fiscal concern that he never had for the defense budget or for the wars that created these toxic exposure difficulties in the first place," comedian and activist Jon Stewart said in an interview with Fox News.
"And once again, it's the same old story," he added. "Always money for war. Always want to balance the budget on the backs of sick veterans. And now it's even more despicable, because having passed the act, giving great hope to the families of wounded veterans and their caregivers that are suffering from this without the health care and benefits that they've earned, it's being held up once more."
John Feal, who has lobbied in Washington with Stewart for legislation for both burn pit veterans and 9/11 first responders, says he's disappointed that Sen. Toomey did not do what was "morally right."
"[He] is holding up and preventing our nation's heroes who protect us from harm's way 24/7 and in the health care they deserve," Feal said in an interview with Fox News. "Shame on Senator Toomey…those amendments are not new, and this is just another way of holding this up and delaying the inevitable."
On June 23, when the Senate deliberated the PACT Act after a cloture vote, Toomey expressed his concerns with the language of the bill. He argued that there already was $400 billion allocated in the discretionary spending budget, and that moving it to the mandatory spending budget would be nothing more than a "gimmick" to avoid spending caps. The senator said his amendment to keep the budget under discretionary spending would prevent the potential for "huge excessive spending" in other categories.
"Senator Toomey is asking for a fix to prevent the PACT Act from being used to increase spending completely unrelated to veterans," a spokeswoman for the senator said in a statement provided to Fox News. "As currently written, the PACT Act includes a budget gimmick that will allow Democrats to increase spending totally unrelated to veterans by $400 billion over the next 10 years. Sen. Toomey’s technical fix would prevent this unrelated spending without changing any of the underlying policy in the bill" (my uderlineing).
Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough, who appeared after Toomey on "State of the Union," said the senator’s amendment would lead to the rationing of health care for veterans.
"The ($400B) fund is in the bill so that we can ensure … that all this spending for this program is for the veterans exposed to these toxins," McDonough said. "And so he says it won't impact our programming – in good conscience, I don't see that to be the case. In fact, he puts a year-on-year cap on what we spend, and then at the end of 10 years, the fund goes away under his amendment. So the impact of that would be, if his estimations are wrong about what will spend in any given year, that means that we may have to ration care for veterans. And by the way, that's not something I’ll sign up to."
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Guess this one just set me off.
Dick
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