9/6/2023 0 Comments Im just a bill jon stewart![]() Moran said he is open to "whatever solution is necessary to get it done." While he said he thinks Toomey's position has merit, his preference would be to pass the bill and then pass separate legislation later to address Toomey's concern. But I'm not going to allow that to happen." Unfortunately, many of the appropriators voted with Toomey. "Every appropriator should be mad as hell about that. "Toomey wants to take away the ability of appropriators to do their job," Tester said. "We're going to be pushing to get it done before September, but we'll see, and the decision hasn't been made yet," Tester told reporters.Īsked whether he could make a deal with Toomey, Tester railed against the senator. Veterans advocates and some Democrats are now calling on the Senate to postpone its recess until the bill is passed. The Senate is scheduled to leave town at the end of next week until after Labor Day, meaning the earliest the bill could come back to the floor is likely September. The path forward on the bill now is unclear. "There may have been emotion," Moran told reporters. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., on a climate change, tax and health care bill. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., co-author of the bill and one of eight Republicans who voted in favor of advancing it Wednesday, also suggested some of his colleagues were mad about an unrelated deal announced around the time of the vote between Schumer and Sen. Senate Veterans Affairs Committee ranking member Sen. It's a budgetary gimmick that has the intent of making it possible to have a huge explosion in unrelated spending." "There is a mechanism created in this bill. "My concern about this bill has nothing to do with the purpose of the bill," Toomey said on the Senate floor after the failed procedural vote. But Toomey apparently lobbied enough of his Republican colleagues to his side to tank the procedural vote. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., about one of the bill's funding mechanisms. The Senate's second vote had been expected to go smoothly, despite objections from Sen. So, the House passed a version of the bill without the tax language in a 342-88 vote earlier this month, kicking it back to the Senate for a second vote. The problematic section would have provided a tax incentive to entice health care workers to move to rural VA facilities. But shortly after the Senate vote, House lawmakers discovered language that ran afoul of the Constitution's requirement that tax-related issues originate in the lower chamber. The Senate previously approved the bill in an 84-14 vote in June, appearing to put it on a glide path to becoming law. While much of the bill is focused on the post-9/11 generation of veterans, there are also several provisions meant to help prior generations exposed to other toxins, including broadening coverage for veterans exposed to radiation during nuclear waste cleanup in the 1960s and for Vietnam-era veterans exposed to Agent Orange. That means veterans with those ailments will no longer have to prove to the Department of Veterans Affairs that their illness was caused by their time in uniform in order to get health care and disability benefits. ![]() To do that, the bill would designate 23 diseases as presumed to be linked to military service. forces in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region incinerated everything from plastic bottles to computers to Humvees. The rest of the "no" votes were Republicans, including 25 who supported a nearly identical version of the bill in June.Īt the heart of the bill is an expansion of benefits for post-9/11 veterans who breathed in toxic fumes from massive trash fires known as burn pits, where U.S. ![]() One of the "no" votes was Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who needed to switch his vote from "yes" in order to be able to bring the bill up for a vote again in the future. On Wednesday, the Senate voted 55-42 to advance the bill, short of the 60 votes needed for the procedural motion to pass. And this is a piece of legislation, by the way, that everybody thought on June 16 was a done deal." "This delay might not sound like a big thing, but number one, we don't have the bill passed, and number two, there are going to be veterans die between now and when this bill passes. "I have never seen anything that's happened like happened yesterday," Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester, D-Mont., said at the news conference. Instead, the feeling of betrayal was palpable among the assembled veterans advocates and Democratic lawmakers after a majority of Senate Republicans blocked the bill from advancing in a procedural vote, despite having supported it just a month ago. ![]()
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