DV Journal

Comedian-turned-progressive-activist Jon Stewart launched a profanity-laced tirade against Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey and other Republicans over a healthcare bill that would provide care for veterans exposed to toxic fumes from burn pits.

“The Senate’s where accountability goes to die,” Stewart said. “These people don’t care. They’re never losing their jobs. They’re never losing their healthcare. Pat Toomey didn’t lose his job. He’s walking away. God knows what kind of pot of gold he’s stepping into to lobby this government to s**t on more people.”

But is that the real story?

No, says Toomey, who has repeatedly said he wants to support the PACT Act, but objects to Democrats using the legislation to create a $400 billion expense that would continue past the needs of the veterans it is designed to address.

“The PACT Act as written includes a budget gimmick that would allow $400 billion of current law spending to be moved from the discretionary to the mandatory spending category. This provision is completely unnecessary to achieve the PACT Act’s stated goal of expanding health care and other benefits for veterans,” Toomey said in a statement.

On July 11, Toomey said on the Senate floor the existing law requires the Veterans Administration to spend about $400 billion over the next 10 years on healthcare for veterans exposed to toxins during their service. The bill includes $280 billion in new spending. The $400 billion is discretionary spending, which has a cap.

The new legislation would put the $280 billion into the mandatory spending column, where it could live long after the veterans are cared for.

“What’s really outrageous is they take the $400 billion out of discretionary spending to mandatory spending,” Toomey said. “Why would they do that?”

“That way you create a big gaping hole in the discretionary spending category,” he said. “Which can be filled with another $400 billion of totally unrelated spending. Who knows on what?”

“We’ve got inflation that hitting a 40-year high. We’ve got a government that’s been spending billions of dollars, printing the money to spend, and everybody sees it every day, at the pump, at the grocery store, everywhere. And what this gimmick does is, it makes it possible to spend yet another $400 billion.”

Stewart remained unappeased.

“Patriot Pat Toomey stood on the floor and said, ‘This is a slush fund,’” said Stewart. “‘They’re gonna use $400 billion to spend on whatever they want.’ That’s nonsense. I call bulls**t. This isn’t a slush fund.”

Now Pennsylvania’s other Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat, is also getting into the fray.

“This bill is essential to meet our obligations to fulfill our promise to them. These veterans already fulfilled their promise. They served their country in a war zone,” Casey said. “They could have been killed by combat fire. But even If they weren’t killed by combat fire they’re exposed to burn pits. We’ve got to provide them healthcare. If we don’t do this, what kind of a country are we?

“Who do we claim to be if we’re not going to do this? There are 14 members of the Senate who are against this. They’re holding up the bill because they don’t want to spend this money. It’s as simple as that.

“All we’ve got to do in the Senate is put our hand up. And say ‘yes.’ That’s pretty damn easy. Put your damn hand up,” Casey added.

Toomey’s spokesperson noted to Delaware Valley Journal, “This wasn’t even in the House committee version. This gimmick would allow for an additional $400 billion in future discretionary spending completely unrelated to veterans over the next 10 years.

“Sen. Toomey’s technical fix does not reduce spending on veterans by even $1 or affect the expansion of care and benefits in the underlying bill. All Sen. Toomey has asked for is that the legislation to spend $280 billion on an expansion of veterans benefits, all classified as mandatory and un-offset, does not also include a transfer of current law (non-PACT Act) spending to mandatory that would enable $400 billion of spending on things completely unrelated to veterans.”

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Shaking with adrenaline, Robert McLaughlin was “raging” when he went to the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Philadelphia for help.

It has been five years since that harrowing encounter, but the Air Force veteran, now 32 and living in Bensalem, recalled the day with striking clarity, in an interview ahead of Veteran’s Day.

It changed his life for the better — and could have altered it for the worse if a caretaker hadn’t intervened.

McLaughlin, who served for five years starting in 2007, struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder when he came home after spending time working in the burn pits in Iraq and doing tours of  duty in Afghanistan and Qatar.

Courtesy of Robert McLaughlin

He was stressed about his future and struggling financially. He had quit a job as an assistant manager at Wendy’s to start a fledgling dog-training business.

Tired of fighting with Veterans Affairs officials to honor his benefits, he was agitated and suicidal, having put a gun in his mouth several times before the visit.

The nurse at the front desk of the emergency room ran McLaughlin through standard intake questions. When she got to the last question, asking whether he was homicidal or suicidal, McLaughlin almost snapped.

“No, not right now. But I’m getting there,” he responded, prompting the nurse to reach under the table and hit the panic button, alerting security at the facility. “It was like the bell went off in a [boxing] ring.”

Unfortunately, McLaughlin’s horror story isn’t unique.

In 2015, a year before McLaughlin’s visit, another veteran, Gary Dorman, jumped to his death from the VA parking garage after seeking psychiatric treatment at the facility.

And area veterans who spoke with the Delaware Valley Journal recalled similar struggles as McLaughlin in gaining access to adequate healthcare, housing, employment, and services that would help them reintegrate into society after their tours of duty.

Philadelphia ranked as one of the worst major cities to live for the more than 19 million veterans in the U.S., according to a recent survey examining 100 of the nation’s biggest cities along several socioeconomic factors.

Cities were graded based on the number of skill-specific job offerings for vets, income levels, overall “veteran-friendliness,” and other factors. The results were less than lovely for the City of Brotherly Love, which came in 91st with a score of 44.1, ahead only of places like North Las Vegas, Newark, Jersey City, Baltimore and Detroit — which finished dead last.

The top three cities, respectively, were Tampa Bay, Austin, Texas, and Scottsdale, Arizona. They all provide significant opportunities for employment, better healthcare, and overall quality of life for vets, according to the survey. One expert cited in the report, Kevin Griffith, an assistant professor who teaches health policy at Vanderbilt University, said veterans are at higher risk for certain health disorders, such as PTSD and hepatitis C, than the rest of society.

Finding cities with robust healthcare facilities, either through the VA or private medical networks, that can address combat-specific issues such as “survivor’s guilt” can be the difference between life and death for veterans.

McLaughlin found that out the hard way, saying he undoubtedly would have come to blows with VA security if his wife hadn’t called a hospital coordinator who called off the officers.

“Pain kinda engages me. When you rage you have all this power that they build up in our bodies for warfare, and you come home and you have no way to get this out. I think they want us to lose our sh*t. If I go to jail, I don’t get my veterans benefits,” said McLaughlin, who has visited the Philly VA so many times in recent years that he’s memorized the address —3900 Woodland Avenue.

“If I had a genie who said, ‘What do you want?’ I’d say ‘I want 3900 Woodland Avenue to go away.’ It would take away a leg of their facade [of help],” he said.

Growing up in the “Black Bottom” Mantua section in West Philadelphia, Rodney Wyatt, a 67-year-old veteran who served in both the U.S. Marines and Army, said he joined the armed forces in the 1970s to escape poverty during times of great racial strife and get away from neighborhood gangs.

He was initiated into the “grandfather of all gangs” when he was 10 years old.

“It was a way of life at the time,” he said.

Knowing what it’s like to suffer from his own injuries after getting out of service, Wyatt started a Bristol-based nonprofit, Salute to Veterans, in 2014, helping veterans, some in their 90s, get “basic necessities” they need to live, to offset unmet gaps from agencies in the area.

In 2015, Philly officials claimed the city’s homeless veteran population was “functionally zero,” but The Philadelphia Inquirer reported this year that many veterans are still living on the streets. The Philly VA in 2020 reported that it found housing for at least 935 local veterans.

And with the suburban shelter overrun, Wyatt said some homeless vets were forced to live in the woods while others were waitlisted for services. While his organization helps between 10 to 25 veterans a week, Wyatt lamented a 94-year-old who died before the organization could clear the red tape to get the man his benefits.

“They take them through the ringer,” Wyatt said. “There’s so many disparities here. We’re the most overlooked population in the county. We need to be spotlighting veterans every day.”

Wyatt regularly fields calls from frustrated veterans who try to get help at the Philly VA, which has faced some bad publicity over the years.

In 2020, the feds charged a manager at the hospital with accepting thousands of dollars in kickbacks to steer contracts to a Florida couple, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

Federal prosecutors indicted another 15 VA employees and business owners in Florida the year before, for alleging they schemed to bilk millions marked for veterans’ care through inflated or unfulfilled purchase orders.

Money like that could have been funneled to help disabled veterans like 63-year-old Darryl Williams, of Bristol Township, who served in the 82nd Airborne Division out of Fort Bragg in North Carolina between 1975 and 1979. Before being diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, six years ago, Williams drove big rigs across the county, up and down the West Coast and as far away as Canada.

His condition has worsened, making it nearly impossible for him to drive and difficult to even fill out paperwork to get his benefits. He now gets along in a motorized wheelchair and must be hooked up to a half-dozen machines to keep him alive.

Williams requires in-home care but said the VA has fought paying for certain services, like housekeeping. It took him a year to get the financial assistance to make his Bristol home handicap accessible, requiring floors to be redone and entrances widened.

The VA will only cover expenses for someone to come out to his home and make up his bed and cook his meals, wanting Williams to transition over to hospice.

“When I die, I plan to die in my home,” said Williams, who has been hospitalized at least twice in the last few months with breathing complications. “It’s hard to find assistance because people expect you to do it on your own. And then they tell me to go to some website. I do have a computer but it’s not easy to operate when your hands are shaking.

“I just stay close to God. And just deal with the situation and try not to get angry. It does get frustrating because I didn’t ask for this. It just happened. Bad things happen to good people. It’s just a roll of the dice.”

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Military veterans make up roughly 10 percent of the adult population in the United States. Unfortunately, one of the most common causes of death for veterans is suicide. Increases in veteran suicide, especially during COVID, have caused the Troops First Foundation to take action by submitting a letter to Congress.

This letter, signed by the seven living secretaries of Veterans Affairs (VA), introduced an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would make November 21, 2021, the first annual “National Warrior Call Day.”

U.S. Rep. Mary Scanlon (D-Delaware Co.) told Delaware Valley Journal the designation is only part of the solution to the large issue. Warrior Call Day’s goal is for Americans across the country to reach out to their family and friends who have served.

“By creating the day, there’ll start to be resources behind it,” Scanlon said. “There’s an organizing principle, and the various veterans groups can get behind it and community groups can kind of weigh in as well. I think it’s probably in a lot of ways just trying to bring more attention to the issue. I guess in a way that’s deemed to be helpful. One of the issues that we’ve seen over time, and you see the same thing with law enforcement, is that it’s very tough to kind of crack the nut with veterans to make sure that they get the services that are available, how to reach people, and similar to law enforcement, it’s the folks who are used to being the rescuers and not wanting to ask for help. So, trying to get the connections that will actually be helpful is the continuing challenge.”

Mental health issues are not uncommon in the United States, especially among military veterans. According to the VA, more than 1.7 million veterans received services for mental health issues in 2018.

Former VA Sec. David Shulkin, MD said, “Warrior Call Day is important to remind each of us that the sacrifices continue for the brave men and women who defend our country. We want all Americans to be aware of the responsibility to reach out and offer support to our veterans.”

Part of the issue with mental health and military veterans is the stigma that surrounds these issues. Asking for help can often be seen as a weakness for members of the Armed Forces. There is hope that Warrior Call Day will bring more attention to this problem and help break that cycle.

“I think it’s probably part of the whole de-stigmatization issue that we’re dealing with across the board with mental health issues and making sure that people check in with their loved ones and trying to get some traction that way,” Scanlon said. “Because of the escalating issues with suicide there have been a number of different approaches, whether it’s beefing up resources, or trying to find alternative methods of service delivery, making sure that we connect people as they’re leaving the service more strongly so they don’t have to go looking as hard. I think it’s part of a whole menu of efforts to really get a handle on the problem.”

For veterans, the services and resources by federal agencies, particularly the VA, often get mixed reviews. According to a survey by Pew Research, only 46 percent of those veterans surveyed felt the VA was doing a good job. Another survey by Pew Research found 37 percent felt the VA is doing a fair job, while 15 percent felt it is doing a poor job.

“I don’t think [Warrior Call Day] alone is going to bring these changes. I think it’s trying to shine a light on a particular issue and the mental health issues and trying to bring more public attention to it,” Scanlon said. “But being done in conjunction with a whole bunch of different efforts that have been trying to get more services available through the VA and make sure they’re more effective.”

One such way that Congress has moved to help veterans has been the Blue Water Navy Bill passed in 2019. This allows veterans exposed to Agent Orange an automatic presumption, which makes it easier for qualified veterans to receive compensation for conditions resulting from that service-related experience.

Scanlon also mentioned that a similar issue is being explored for post-9/11 veterans and the burn-pits used in the Middle East. About 25 percent of veterans are already experiencing health issues from exposure to these pits.

“We do have more former-service members in Congress now than we’ve had in decades so that is helpful to have people in the mix who are first hand on some of the issues,” Scanlon added.

Former VA Sec. Robert McDonald also urges Americans of the importance of National Warrior Call Day.

“We must get Veterans connected to other Veterans and the qualified care they deserve,” McDonald said. “The Veterans Crisis Line (1-800-273-8255) plays a critically important role in this. They save lives. We know from research that if we can connect Veterans to the VA (and the Crisis Line) we can save lives. Nearly 70 percent of those who take their own lives are not connected to the VA. So, National Warrior Call Day is an opportunity to connect every Veteran to the care they need and deserve.”

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