Working for Veterans' Benefits

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUIZ. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The Honoring our PACT Act is the most significant expansion of healthcare access and benefits for veterans in generations.

Now, over 5 million veterans and family members will have the peace of mind that if they become ill due to their exposure to toxic burn pits or they are disabled and cannot work, or God forbid, they pass away, they will receive the benefits that they need to overcome an illness, the healthcare to be able to stay at home with their family because they are unable to work, and if they pass, they will have peace of mind that their family will get their benefits.

Look, for many years I have brought this issue up in committees, in the Veterans' Affairs Committee and the general public that veterans were dying of cancers, veterans were unable to breathe due to pulmonary illnesses, all of which were due to the toxic air that they breathe from the smoke from burn pits.

The initial excuses were the evidence does not show any correlation. As a scientist, I refuted that. They asked the wrong questions, and their methodologies were flawed.

Then the other excuse was that it was too expensive. Well, our values are to put the lives of our veterans first and foremost. We send them to war without consideration of the cost of war; therefore, it is our moral obligation to take care of veterans.

I fought this tooth and nail under the banner of the name of Jennifer Kepner, a veteran who served in Balad Air Base in Iraq who died of pancreatic cancer. Before she died, I met with her at home at her kitchen table. She made me promise that no other veteran should suffer what she went through in trying to get the care and the benefits for her family. We accomplished and fulfilled that promise when we introduced the presumptive benefits for warfighters exposed to burn pits and other toxins which was included in the Honoring our PACT Act, which was the heart and soul of the Honoring our PACT Act because it gave presumptive benefits to 23 illnesses and categories of illnesses which total over 300 illnesses--and that is continuing to grow.

The reason why we are here is because House Democrats continue to fight hard to ensure the implementation of the PACT Act.

Last year, I spoke very frequently about a pending deadline for veterans to file an intent to file a claim for the PACT Act, which if they did so within a year after they filed that intent to file, they would get presumptive benefits and backpay to the day that the law was enacted.

We are nearing the deadline of that intent to file, which means that veterans had a year to file their claim, to get that backpay until the day the law was signed, and if they haven't then they should do so before August 14 or before the year of when they filed that intent.

If they do so, then they will get their pay and their benefits to the date of when the law was signed. If they don't or if they miss that year after they filed that intent, they should not despair. It is not as if this is your last chance of getting the claims; the only difference will be that they will get their benefits backtracked to the date that they filed their claim from that point on.

It is very urgent that we inform our veterans that if they filed an intent to file that they file the claim before the end of the year to the date that they filed their intent to file. That is why it is very important that veterans go to VA.gov, the VA website, or call 1-800- 827-1000, call their Members of Congress, work with their county veteran service organizations representative or any of the VSOs and get the information that is needed so they don't miss out on the additional full benefits that the PACT Act gave our veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I again thank everybody who was involved. I thank President Biden and Secretary McDonough who were the game changers during this long fight that we have been having that culminated in such a victory for our veterans.

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