NC senators help stall veterans health bill addressing Camp Lejeune exposures

A Senate vote Wednesday night left veterans’ groups and Democrats reeling after Republicans blocked a bill that would have helped veterans exposed to toxic chemicals in Camp Lejeune’s drinking water.

Both Sens. Thom Tillis and Richard Burr, who represent North Carolina, were among the group that prevented the bill from moving forward, even though they had helped write portions of it.

That led Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper to post on Twitter on Thursday evening that Tillis “talks a lot about supporting veterans, but when they need him he votes no. This bill would also help Lejuene vets and their families. He should be ashamed for failing those who sacrificed for our country.”

The bill known as the PACT Act came before the Senate Wednesday night due to a technical correction made by the House. It was expected to easily pass since it was the Senate’s second vote on the bill and it had previous passed the chamber 88-14.

But moments before the Senate voted to end cloture on the measure, which essentially ends debate and moves the bill to a vote, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he, Sen. Joe Manchin and the Biden administration reached an agreement on an inflation, health care and climate-change bill.

That announcement caught Republicans off-guard. Many saw the Senate’s 55-42 vote not to advance the PACT Act as Republicans’ attempt to push back against the inflation bill.

“What happened yesterday was unacceptable,” said Sen. Jon Tester, a bill sponsor, at a news conference in front of the Capitol on Thursday morning. “I’ve been here long enough to know that if you want to find a reason to vote against a bill you can, but the truth about what happened yesterday is they voted against the men and women who fought for this country that want to return back to civilian life and have a normal life; and not only those folks but their families.”

Burr and Tillis’ votes

Neither Burr nor Tillis changed their vote between the June 16 vote in the Senate and the one Wednesday night.

Both senators had been instrumental in writing portions of the PACT Act, particularly involving Camp Lejeune. Originally, the duo created the Camp Lejeune Justice Act to help veterans who served between August 1953 and December 1987 on Camp Lejeune and Marine Corps Air Station New River.

Veterans serving in those years may have been exposed to toxins including trichlorethylene, perchloroethylene, benzene and vinyl chloride that were found in the bases’ drinking water. The toxins led to birth problems and high risks of cancers and other health issues.

But veterans found themselves unable to sue over the toxins because North Carolina had a 10-year deadline from when an exposure happened to when a person could file a lawsuit. Tillis worked to remove that law when he served as the state’s House speaker, but it wasn’t retroactive, so it didn’t help Camp Lejeune’s veterans.

The Camp Lejeune Justice Act was written to make it so that veterans of the bases could file suits. That bill was combined with the Honoring our PACT Act of 2021. The entirety of the combined bill provides health care through the Department of Veterans Affairs to veterans exposed to toxic substances, ensures veterans aren’t forced to prove their exposure before receiving care and makes improvements to the department’s process for receiving care for exposure.

When it came up for a vote on June 16, both Burr and Tillis voted it down.

Tillis immediately put out a statement saying despite drafting a large portion of the bill he had concerns over whether the VA had the resources to implement the bill without causing increased wait times, delays in receiving care and a substantial backlog in claims.

“Nothing changed from our previous statement,” Adam Webb, Tillis’ spokesman, said Thursday morning.

Despite Tillis and Burr’s objections, the bill moved forward. The House passed it 256-174 before it stalled in the Senate.

NC Democrats react

North Carolina’s Democrats immediately released statements on the Senate’s failure to pass the bill, including Senate candidate Cheri Beasley, who is looking to replace Burr following his retirement.

“It is repulsive that our Senators chose to play politics with the lives of service members, veterans, and military families by refusing to pass widely supported, bipartisan legislation to get them the care they need,” Beasley said in a news release. “These kinds of outrageous political games are exactly what the people of North Carolina are sick and tired of – and it underscores exactly what’s at stake in this election and why we must elect a Senator who will put the people first.”

Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat representing a portion of the Triad who co-sponsored the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, said the vote denies justice to veterans who served in North Carolina.

“I’m disappointed to see that Senate Republicans blocked legislation to provide health care to toxic-exposed veterans in the name of partisan politics,” Manning wrote on Twitter. “Our veterans deserve better. I won’t stop fighting to deliver on our promises to veterans.”

Rep. David Price, a Democrat representing the Triangle, said that the vote denied vital cancer care to veterans.

“It’s abundantly clear: Republicans are choosing to play politics with the lives of our nation’s veterans,” Price tweeted.

Veterans’ news conference

At their news conference outside the Capitol Thursday, Democrats were joined by leaders of veterans’ groups and family members of veterans harmed by toxins while serving overseas, who discussed their frustration and anger with the Senate.

Comedian Jon Stewart, an advocate for the bill, had planned to visit Washington on Thursday to celebrate the bill’s passage. Most of his words at the news conference weren’t fit to print, but it was clear he was angered by the Senate’s decision.

“They passed it,” Stewart said, his voice catching slightly. “June 16, they passed the PACT Act — 84-14 — you don’t even see those scores in the Senate anymore. They passed it!”

Veterans deserved those benefits, he said.

“They lived up to their oath,” Stewart said before raising his index finger and pointing toward the Senate, “and yesterday they spit on it in abject cruelty. They haven’t met a war they haven’t signed up for and they haven’t met a veteran they won’t screw over.”

Republicans react

Webb, Tillis’ spokesman, said little in response to Thursday’s vote but pointed to the floor speech Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave Thursday morning.

McConnell said Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, presented an amendment Republicans wanted passed that would fix underlying accounting issues in the VA. But McConnell blamed Schumer for trying to block “any semblance of a fair amendment process.”

“As written, the legislation would not just help American’s veterans as designed, it would also allow Democrats to effectively spend the same money twice and enable hundreds of billions of new unregulated or unrelated spending on the discretionary side of the federal budget,” McConnell said. “There’s no excuse why the Democratic leader should continue to block Sen. Toomey’s common-sense amendment. A bill this important and this bipartisan deserves for us to fix the accounting gimmick, and then it deserves to become law.”

PACT Act’s future

When Schumer saw that Republicans planned to block the bill from going forward, he voted no on ending debate in order to be able to bring the bill back to the floor later.

Military Veterans Advocacy Chairman Commander John B. Wells said in a written statement Thursday that he understood Wednesday’s decision to be a “speed bump.”

“Apparently there are some cost and amendment issues that need to be resolved before the bill moves to the Floor,” Wells wrote. “I spoke with one senator who voted no, who assured me that the bill will be passed.”

Outside the Capitol, Tester encouraged bill supporters to start calling Republicans to make their voices heard.

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