Veterans and advocates have spent much of the last week camped outside the U.S. Capitol begging senators to vote again on legislation that would provide health care benefits to veterans suffering from exposure to burn pits.
Among them is Susan Zeier of Sandusky, Ohio, who said she has spent the last five years fighting for the bill, which is named after her late son-in-law, Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson, who died from lung cancer in 2020 after exposure to burn pits. Robinson was an Ohio Army National Guardsman who was exposed to toxic burn pits while serving in Kosovo and Iraq.
“We’ve had a lot of people donating food and drinks,” she told Spectrum News.
It was almost 10 o’clock Monday outside the U.S. Capitol, but Zeier and fellow veteran advocates were not going anywhere, they said.
The advocates have been camped there since last week when a Senate vote on legislation to help veterans suffering from burn pit exposure unexpectedly failed.
The bill, dubbed the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxins or PACT Act, easily passed the Senate back in June by an 84-14 margin. The bill was sent to the House for minor revisions before it was sent back to the Senate for another vote.
But more than two dozen Republican senators who had voted in favor of the bill flipped last week when it came up for a second vote. Fifty-five voted “yea” and 42 voted “nay” with three not voting, falling short of the 60-vote threshold needed to pass the Senate.
Some Senate Republicans said aspects of the bill’s funding caused them to vote ‘no’ on the measure.
Zeier said she thought the bill would pass the Senate – “to have this derailment really hurt,” she said – adding that she and fellow advocates are furious after getting their hopes up high on the bill’s passage.
“They voted against my family! They voted for all of us to suffer,” she told Spectrum Networks.
Each year since 2017, Zeier has been driving from Sandusky, Ohio to Washington following Robinson’s diagnosis to gain traction on the cause.
Her message finally got through when her daughter was invited to the State of the Union, she continued. Adding, “Danielle Robinson was invited by first lady Dr. Jill Biden’s as guest in honor of her late husband, Heath.”
President Biden believed his son Beau’s cancer also was caused by burn pit exposure while he severed in the military.
For the past 20 years, studies have shown that around 3.5 million post-9/11 combat veterans may have been exposed to dangerous chemicals while in the line of duty, according to the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee.
On the Senate floor on Monday, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that they were “going to give Senate Republicans another chance to do the right thing, to work with us so we can send this bill to the president’s desk ASAP.”
“Our veterans who got sick from toxic exposure in the line of duty must get the health care they need and deserve,” Schumer said on Twitter. “They’ve gotten serious, serious conditions – cancers, lung diseases. They’ve sacrificed everything. They risk life and limb and the very least we can do as a country is ensure they receive top car.”
“I can feel him sitting on my shoulders,” Zeier said of her late son-in-law. “That’s why I wear his Army jacket when I’m on Capitol Hill or advocating, even if I’m in Ohio.”
But as far as giving up? “Never,” she said.
After a week of back-and-forth, the Senate passed the bill Tuesday evening by an 86-11 vote. President Joe Biden has already indicated he will sign it into law.
