Budget scuffle stalls ‘Blue Water’ benefits for Vietnam veterans

WASHINGTON — Senators and veterans groups are working to convince a few last holdouts to stop blocking a quick floor vote on a bill to extend benefits for Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange.

Advocates are lobbying President Donald Trump to sign the bill if the Senate clears it. But Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has questions about whether science backs up the policy. And Budget Chairman Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming is concerned about its nearly $2.2 billion cost over a decade.

Lawmakers want to pass it as a stand-alone bill in the Senate through a unanimous consent request, which does not require an actual floor vote of all senators. An attempt to do so Monday, led by New York Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand, was unsuccessful after Enzi objected.

Given that the bill’s cost could require a waiver of pay-as-you-go budget rules, which require new spending to be offset by cuts or revenue elsewhere, there’s also a possibility that it could hitch a ride on any tax legislation that makes it through the lame-duck session.

House lawmakers passed the legislation under suspension of the rules by a vote of 382-0 in June.

The legislation would provide additional compensation to veterans potentially exposed to Agent Orange when serving off the coast of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Benefits would come both in the form of disability compensation and health care. Veterans who served on the mainland were eligible for the increased benefits as part of the Agent Orange Act of 1991.

But in 2002, the Department of Veterans Affairs determined that service members must have actually set foot in Vietnam to receive disability status due to chemical exposure, a ruling that was also upheld in court in 2008.

That excluded a cadre of Navy veterans who served in submarines and on ships, for example, who might have been seeking new disability benefits when the VA made the 2002 change. The decision has precipitated a number of legal challenges, but so far, Vietnam vets based offshore have been excluded from the benefits.

Lawmakers and veterans organizations are pushing for compensation for these socalled Blue Water Navy veterans, pointing to what they call growing evidence that suggests that even people who never landed ashore in Vietnam suffered from exposure.

But some lawmakers question whether veterans who served offshore faced the same toxic exposures as those who served on land. Lee wants to wait for a VA report to assess whether the health outcomes that Blue Water veterans are experiencing are indeed due to Agent Orange exposure decades ago. That study is expected to be completed sometime next year.

Until that study comes out, Lee doesn’t think the Senate should advance the bill, his spokesman Conn Carroll said. “We think the science should inform the policy and not the other way around,” he said.