Two-year-old law prompts big expansion in health care and benefits for veterans

So, why the lies by congressional Republicans?

Photo by Alexander Jawfox on Unsplash

Right wingers are trying to convince you Joe Biden is stealing from veterans to help illegal immigrants.

It’s a lie, and Joni Ernst is in on the scam.

I’ll explain why this is BS shortly. But first, it’s important to understand that over the past year and a half, claims at the federal Department of Veterans Affairs have skyrocketed.

The VA’s inventory of disability and pension claims leaped from just under 600,000 in mid-2022 to more 1 million last year.

Source: Veterans Administration

A significant reason for the increase: A new law Biden signed in 2022.

The PACT Act, as it’s known, vastly expands care and benefits for veterans who were exposed to burn pits and other toxic substances, especially those who served after 9/11. Roughly 76% of these claims had been approved at the end of last year, according to the VA.

Even though there have been some concerns about how the law is being implemented, the PACT Act is the “largest expansion of veterans assistance in decades,” according to the Associated Press.

Veterans tried for years to get help for a range of problems that stemmed from these burn pits, including cancer, lung disease and respiratory conditions. But for years, their claims were denied. In 2020, the VA under Donald Trump told Congress the agency had rejected 78% of disability claims related to toxic exposure from 2007 to 2020.

Biden is proud of the new law. His son, Beau, a veteran of the Iraq War, died from brain cancer at 46. The president’s reelection campaign also ran TV ads touting the law in swing state Pennsylvania last year.

New law faced hurdles

Passage didn’t come without some challenges, however.

The PACT Act appeared to have significant bi-partisan support when it passed the Senate 84-14 in June 2022. Ernst, a combat veteran, and Chuck Grassley, both Republicans, voted for the measure.

Then, a month later, it stalled. The House had passed a version with a small change and sent it to the Senate for repassage. However, 25 Republicans who previously supported the bill, including Ernst, suddenly voted against a procedural measure to move it forward.

Senate Democrats accused Republicans of being upset about an unrelated measure aimed at lowering carbon emissions and raising corporate taxes that suddenly appeared to be moving forward. They said the GOP senators were taking their anger out on veterans.

Republicans denied this. They said their objection was with how the bill would categorize spending, which they claimed would lead to additional non-veteran-related expenditures. (In the House, most Republicans, including from Iowa, initially voted against the PACT Act. Critics cited cost concerns. But eventually a majority of Republicans, including from Iowa, changed course and joined Democrats in voting for the bill.)

Iowa Capital Dispatch headline, July 28, 2022

After the Senate reversal, veterans were angry. They and their advocates, like comedian Jon Stewart, railed against the turnabout outside the US Capitol.

Republicans eventually relented, and the bill passed. Sen. Ernst voted for it.

Grassley, who was up for re-election in 2022, also backed the bill. And he made sure Iowans knew he never wavered. In a tweet, he said, “I want to make very clear to the veterans of Iowa that I’ve consistently supported the PACT Act. I supported it even when it stalled…”

Claims backlog leads to manufactured outrage.

Make no mistake, this is a big investment. The estimated cost at the time of passage was $278.5 billion over 10 years. Since then, a Congressional Budget Office estimate says it will be even more.

Still, thousands of veterans are now able to get help. Prior to 2022, they were being rejected.

Unfortunately, this has led to a growing backlog of cases that rose to more than 400,000 before falling to 330,000 this year. New PACT Act claims are largely responsible.

This is where the scam comes in.

Congressional Republicans are looking at the backlog and connecting it to a 22-year-old arrangement US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has with the VA’s Financial Service Center in Austin, Texas.

As Fox News reported:

When an illegal migrant under ICE detention requires health care, they are typically treated onsite by medical professionals. [Note: ICE has its own health care service.] However, if specialist or emergency care is required, they may be taken to an independent private provider.

In such cases, ICE contracts with the VA’s Financial Service Center (VA-FSC) to process reimbursements to those providers.

The Fox story says the arrangement began in 2002 (when George W. Bush was president) and was “outlined in a 2020 memo during former President Donald Trump’s administration."

Breitbart and the New York Post have run stories about this topic, and Breitbart quotes Ernst as saying, “President Biden’s border crisis is so out of control that his administration is willing to steal from our nation’s heroes and divert resources away from their care.”

Some of these stories, as well as other related Internet posts, play down, if not completely omit, details of the VA/ICE arrangement. A VA spokesman has told multiple media outlets ICE pays for the health care and claims processing, not the VA. Also, the Austin VA office contracts with several federal agencies and “no more than 10” VA employees are devoted to processing migrant claims. (For perspective, the VA employs almost 400,000 people.)

Incidentally, the Post story notes the VA facility processed 161,538 claims pertaining to detained migrants in FY2022, paying out an average of $584 apiece. What it didn’t mention was that in FY2020, under Donald Trump, there were 168,439 claims, with an average cost per claim of $543.

In short, this is one of those fake scandals that doesn’t measure up.

Congressional Republicans and some of their pals in the right-wing media can try to gin up all the phony controversy they want. But the real news here is this: Thousands of American veterans are now able to get care and benefits they were previously denied—thanks to a bill that was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Joe Biden.

In the end, this is what the American people should remember, not the manufactured outrage.

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