Pelosi Floor Speech on Honoring our PACT Act of 2022

Washington, D.C. – Speaker Nancy Pelosi delivered remarks on the Floor of the House of Representatives in support of H.R. 3967, the Honoring our PACT Act. Below are the Speaker's remarks:

Speaker Pelosi. Thank you, Madam Speaker. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I thank him for his leadership as Chair of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. And I thank the bipartisan support that the bill is receiving here.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in strong support on 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, and I'll talk about him in a moment.

This bipartisan legislation honors our duty to deliver health care 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 for – his Ranking Member as well – for making toxic exposure a top priority in this Congress. Thank you, Mr. Takano. 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 loved ones to seek damages related to injuries incurred while serving at Camp Lejeune. We had many people come from the area, the legislators from North Carolina have certainly – 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 health problems, 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. Very important improvement.

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

Make no mistake, burn pit exposures are pervasive: 86 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans report having been exposed to these toxic fumes. I won't go into what's in these pits. It's so disgusting. They are deadly.

The VA has seen a 60 percent increase in cancer tied to toxic exposure in the last 20 years. And when these veterans come home, they're 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 this nation. Many veterans of the Vietnam War were forced to wait for four long decades before their exposure to Agent Orange was recognized and they could claim benefits. And this was, of course, addressed with the Blue Water Navy Vietnam [Veterans] Act that was passed by the Congress in 2019. Some Agent Orange provisions are in the – had 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 1980s. One time, we were joined by Dick Gregory – more than one time – 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 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 were potentially up to 3.5 million veterans deployed after the attacks of September 11th – 3.5 million deployed since September 11th, 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 our veterans in three ways. First, it expands access to VA health care to post-9/11 combat veterans exposed to toxins. Second, it grants presumption of exposure for veterans with rare cancers and COPD and other debilitating diseases. And third, it creates a permanent streamlined process to ensure that future Secretaries will review and approve new exposures swiftly.

Why do we have these burn pits? You know, we keep saying here: on the battlefield, we leave no soldier behind; 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 – that the consequences of it do not show up for a while.

We have spent more than $6 trillion deploying – recruiting, training and deploying our Servicemembers overseas during the last 20 years. But let it be clear: it's only part of the price tag. When we send our troops into conflict, we have to understand that we're responsible for the consequences. Burn pits exposure is one of them.

Toxic exposure are a cost of war, and we must treat it as such. This is not a question of dollars – it's a matter of values.

In all of Congress' work for veterans, it is impressive that veterans groups, our veterans, their families, the Veterans Service Organizations – the VSOs are not only at the table, they are leading the way. And Mr. Takano has been a leader at that table for years, for years. And 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. And they also – I quoted Lincoln over and over again. Lincoln said, ‘Public sentiment is everything. With it, you can accomplish almost anything – without it, practically nothing.'

Well, our veterans cause public sentiment to be aroused to such a point that here we are getting this done. And they enlisted Jon Stewart and John Feal, two people who have been there with us on the 9/11 health benefits – for people exposed at the time of 9/11 – and they have been real champions in the public visibility of this issue. Yes, to help mobilize support for us to pass it, but to give hope to people who had been affected – to know that there's a chance that this can be accomplished. So thank you, Jon Stewart, and thank you, John Feal.

At the same time, it's with great pride and patriotism that the PACT Act has strong bipartisan support – backing, worthy of our heroic veterans. The Congress is also grateful to Secretary McDonough of the VA and the entire Administration for their support. I thank President Biden for making this a priority in the State of the Union address, especially when he talked about his beloved son, Beau.

Madam Speaker, since we passed the PACT Act, this has been named, again as I said, in honor – it has a new name for our veteran we lost in toxic exposure: Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson, who was exposed to burn pits when deployed to Kosovo and Iraq, and afterward 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 that tragic stories like his can never happen again. His 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 a historic victory for our veterans – for their advocacy – that honors that pledge now and for the future.

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

Again, with gratitude to Mr. Takano, I yield back the balance of my time. Thank you.