As Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer once again put the PACT Act on the floor for a vote, Senator Rand Paul argued veterans should not receive government help via the legislation because they might have gotten sick somewhere else. The PACT Act is legislation to help veterans exposed to cancer-causing toxic burn pits.
The bill passed the Senate Tuesday evening by a vote of 86-11. All 11 no votes came from Republicans: Mike Crapo (R-ID), James Lankford (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Rand Paul (R-KY), James Risch (R-ID), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Richard Shelby (R-AL), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Tommy Tuberville (R-AL).
Barely months ago the PACT Act passed the Senate with an 84 vote majority but last week Republicans tried to kill the bill, the exact same legislation many of them had voted for. It failed with just 55 votes, because of the GOP. Outrage was immediate across the nation, and lasted into this week. Former “Daily Show” host John Stewart, who battled Congress for years to help 9/11 first responders get the critical care they need, went to bat for veterans recently as well. He and veterans were in the Senate gallery Tuesday evening when the bill passed.
Calling it “a political surrender by Senate Republicans,” The Washington Post noted it passed “a week after they blocked consideration of the popular legislation seemingly out of political pique because Democrats clinched a party-line deal on an unrelated massive domestic policy bill that could be considered later this week.”
The bill is especially important to President Joe Biden. His son Beau Biden died of brain cancer in 2015 at the age of 46, the President says, as a result of his exposure to toxic burn pits in Kosovo and Iraq.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and the rest of his GOP Senate caucus seemed stunned the American public was so outraged that 41 Republicans had blocked the bill from passing last week. He assured reporters it would now pass, even though the language had not changed from the original bill over the past few months.
“Yeah, it’ll pass this week,” McConnell told NBC News’ Ali Vitali on Monday, after massive outrage. Republicans had falsely claimed the language in the bill had changed; it had not.
Sen. Paul argued against passage of the bill earlier Tuesday, claiming veterans could have gotten sick in non-service related ways. He even warned helping vets would put America’s economy at risk.
“This bill puts out economy though, at risk, by creating assumptions of service connections for the most common of ailments,” Sen. Paul claimed. “For example, this legislation creates a presumption of service connection for Vietnam veterans for hypertension.”
“According to the CDC,” Paul went on to complain, “59 percent of men, and 44 percent of women in the United States have hypertension,” the Kentucky Republican dentist said. “More than 60 percent of people over the age of 60 do.”