For the second time in the last
12 months, House lawmakers overwhelmingly passed a measure to ease disability
benefit rules for veterans who served on ships off the coasts of Vietnam and
suffered serious illnesses they insist are connected to chemical defoliant
exposure.
And, once again, advocates are
left waiting to see if the Senate will follow suit.
The legislation — the Blue Water
Navy Vietnam Veterans Act — passed 410-0 with strong messages of support from
both Democratic and Republican leadership. House Veterans’ Affairs Committee
Chairman Mark Takano, D-Calif., said the move is needed to correct what he
called years of mistakes in denying those veterans disability benefits for
their injuries.
“Congress has failed our blue water Navy
veterans, plain and simple,” he said on the House floor before the vote.
“Today, we will right this wrong … This bill is the quickest and clearest route
to delivering benefits to those who served. They have waited long enough.”
Federal officials have until the
end of April to formally decide whether to appeal a court ruling which could
grant disability benefits to more than 90,000 veterans.
The measure affects about 90,000
veterans who served on ships during the Vietnam War but never set foot in the
country. If they had, they would be eligible for presumptive benefits from the
Department of Veterans Affairs, a process which bypasses hard evidence
connecting a veteran’s illness to their military service because of an
established presumed connection between the two.
So while a veteran who served on
the shoreline can receive disability payouts after contracting Parkinson’s
disease or prostate cancer, a veteran who served on a ship a few miles away
would have to provide specific scientific evidence that they were exposed to
toxic chemicals while on duty.
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