Protecting Our Gold Star Families Education Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. PELOSI. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I thank him for his leadership as chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. I am grateful for the bipartisan support that the bill is receiving here.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the landmark Honoring our PACT Act. As you know, PACT stands for Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act, now named after Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson. I am going to talk about him in a moment.

This bipartisan legislation honors our duty to deliver healthcare that millions of veterans need and that they have certainly earned. This is the second time the House has voted on this important bill, and we are proud that after the Senate passes this version, we will finally send it to the President to be signed into law.

For their relentless leadership on this legislation, let me salute Chairman Mark Takano and his ranking member as well who made addressing toxic exposure a top priority in this Congress; Congressman Raul Ruiz, whose experience as a physician informed a key provision of this bill establishing presumption of exposure; and Congresswoman Elaine Luria, a Navy veteran who authored a provision expanding health benefits to veterans exposed to burn pits.

Also included in this legislation--and I am so pleased about it--is legislation by Congressman Matt Cartwright, author of the Camp Lejeune Justice Act, to allow veterans or their loved ones to seek damages related to injuries incurred while serving at Camp Lejeune.

We have had many people come from the area. The legislators from North Carolina, David Price and others, have been relentless in their pursuit of this legislation. Families would come here and tell their stories of their loved ones' service at Camp Lejeune where the water supply was causing serious health problems not only for the servicemember, which would be horrible enough, but for their family members as well. This is corrected in this legislation and is a very important improvement.

From the deserts of Iraq to the mountains of Afghanistan and on the bases and military theaters around the world, a generation of courageous Americans have donned the Stars and Stripes to protect our freedom. These heroes have put their lives on the line to fight the enemy. Yet, tragically, many of them have confronted another deadly threat: exposure to burn pits and toxins which have taken a severe toll on their health.

Make no mistake: burn pit exposures are pervasive. Eighty-six percent of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report having been exposed to these toxic fumes. I don't want to go into what is in these pits. It is so disgusting.

They are deadly. The VA has seen over a 60 percent increase in rates of cancers tied to toxic exposure in the last 20 years. But when these veterans come home, they are forced into a convoluted claims process which cruelly saddles them with the burden of proof, and nearly three- quarters of burn pit-related claims are denied. Think of the injustice of that.

Tragically, this problem is not new to our Nation. Many veterans of the Vietnam war were forced to wait four long decades before their exposure to Agent Orange was recognized and they could claim benefits. This was, of course, addressed with the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Act that was passed by the Congress in 2019. Some Agent Orange provisions have been in subsequent NDAA legislation.

I know this issue well. Before I was in Congress, I was participating in sit-ins with hunger strikes for Vietnam vets in the early eighties. More than one time we were joined by Dick Gregory who had experience in hunger strikes for civil rights reasons, and he was instructing the veterans on how to hydrate, et cetera, so that they could survive the hunger strikes hopefully in time to make a difference. But it took decades. We cannot and will not let that happen to another generation.

There are potentially up to 3.5 million veterans deployed after the attacks of September 11--3.5 million deployed since September 11--who may have been exposed to toxic fumes and substances, and we must act now to save lives.

The PACT Act is a comprehensive bill--others have discussed what it does--that meets the challenge of toxic exposures for veterans in three ways. First, it expands access to VA healthcare to post-9/11 combat veterans exposed to toxins. Second, it grants presumptions of exposure for veterans with rare cancers, COPD, and other debilitating diseases. Third, it creates a permanent, streamlined process to ensure that future Secretaries will review and approve new exposure swiftly.

Why do we have these burn pits?

We always keep saying here that on the battlefield we leave no soldier behind and when they come home, we leave no veteran behind. And yet, they come home with hidden injuries--whether they are psychological or exposures to a burn pit--the consequences of which do not show up for a while.

We have spent more than $6 trillion recruiting, training, and deploying our servicemembers overseas during the last 20 years. But let's be clear: This is only part of the price tag. When we send our troops into conflict, we have to understand that we are responsible for the consequences. Burn pit exposure is one of them. Toxic exposures are a cost of war, and we must treat it as such. This is not a question of dollars. It is a matter of values.

In all of the Congress' work for veterans, it is imperative that veterans' groups, our veterans, their families, and the veterans service organizations, the VSOs, are not only at the table, but they are also leading the way. Mr. Takano has been a leader at that table for years.

The overwhelming support of VSOs, especially a group now called Burn Pits 360, was absolutely crucial to crafting this bill, steering it through the legislative process, and securing its passage in the House today.

I have quoted Lincoln over and over again. Lincoln said: ``Public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.''

Well, our veterans caused public sentiment to be aroused to such a point that here we are getting this done. They enlisted Jon Stewart and John Feal, two people who had been there with us on the 9/11 health benefits for people exposed at the time of 9/11. And they had been real champions in the public visibility of this issue; not only to help mobilize support for us to pass it, but to give hope to people who have been affected to know that there is a chance that this can be accomplished.

So I thank Jon Stewart, and I thank John Feal.

At the same time, it is with great pride and patriotism that the PACT Act has strong bipartisan and bicameral support worthy of our heroic veterans. This Congress is also grateful to Secretary McDonough, the VA, and the entire administration for their support.

Mr. Speaker, I thank President Biden for making this a priority in his State of the Union Address, especially when he talked about his beloved son, Beau.

Madam Speaker, since we passed the PACT Act, it has been renamed. It has a new name of a veteran we lost from toxic exposure.

Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson was exposed to burn pits while deployed to Kosovo and Iraq, and afterward he battled a rare, deadly lung cancer. Sadly, he died in 2020 at just age 39, leaving behind his wife and daughter. Today, in his memory, we redouble our efforts to ensure tragic stories like his can never happen again. He is representative of so many other stories and the toll that this has taken.

Again, we say that when our troops go to war on the battlefield, we leave no soldier behind. When they come home, we leave no veteran behind. Our PACT Act is an historic victory for our veterans and for their advocacy that honors that pledge now and for the future.

Madam Speaker, I urge a bipartisan vote on the Honoring our PACT Act. I hope it will be almost unanimous. I look forward to seeing it swiftly passed by the Senate and signed into law by the President.

Madam Speaker, again, I am grateful for the leadership of Mr. Takano.

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