Dear Editor:Your column on the Toxic Exposure Bill appropriately describes the abrupt refusal of Senate Republicans to assist the Pact Act, and their abrupt reversal below stress from indignant Veterns’ organizations. (The Act funded analysis and advantages for hundreds of thousands of Veterans harmed by poisonous substances.) But you err in crediting the excuse provided by Senator Toomey (R-PA) that Democrats had inserted a pernicious modification to make $400 billion in discretionary VA spending obligatory. According to impartial press reviews, and Veterans on the scene, this declare is unfaithful. Here’s what actually occurred. Republicans agreed to assist the bipartisan CHIPS Act, stimulating US manufacture of pc {hardware} at the moment made principally in China, in trade for a perceived pledge from Majority Leader Schumer to not embrace local weather spending in a filibuster-proof reconciliation invoice requiring solely a majority vote.
When Schumer and conservative Democrat Joe Manchin then introduced settlement on an Inflation Reduction Act, combining deficit discount, job-creating local weather safety, and authority for Medicare to barter decrease costs, Republicans threw a tantrum, voting in opposition to PACT and urging House Republicans to oppose CHIP. To rescue the invoice, Schumer allowed two face-saving Republican amendments, which failed. Then most Republicans, however not Oklahoma’s James Lankford, voted for the un-amended poisonous publicity invoice. President Biden promptly signed it into regulation, together with the CHIP invoice. Obviously, each events engated in parliamentary maneuvers. Legislatures try this. But Senate Republicans alone held ailing Veterans hostage for no clear function. Fortunately, their ploy failed. Burn pit victims will probably be protected in spite of everything.Gary Harris, Ada
https://www.theadanews.com/opinion/columns/toxic-exposure-bill/article_abc1a8c1-022f-52af-89a3-47fe61eacc26.html
