On Sunday, Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA) defended his decision to vote against the PACT Act, a bill to aid military veterans who had been exposed to toxic burn pits, explaining that Democrats were attempting to exploit the pain of military veterans to “sneak in something completely unrelated.”
Toomey made the comments during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” with anchor Jake Tapper, during which he responded to “false accusations” from comedian Jon Stewart who he called a “pseudo-celebrity.”
“People take a sympathetic group of Americans — and it could be children with an illness, it could be victims of crime, it could be veterans who’ve been exposed to toxic chemicals — craft a bill to address their problems, and then sneak in something completely unrelated that they know could never pass on its own, and dare Republicans to do anything about it,” Toomey said.
Democrats will then “unleash their allies in the media and maybe a pseudo-celebrity to make up false accusations to try to get us to just swallow what shouldn’t be there,” Toomey explained.
Last week, Toomey explained that Democrats had used a budgetary trick in their version of the bill to enable an additional $400 billion in spending completely unrelated to veterans.
“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,” Toomey said. “This provision is completely unnecessary to achieve the PACT Act’s stated goal of expanding health care and other benefits for veterans. However, it would enable an additional $400 billion in future discretionary spending completely unrelated to veterans. By failing to remove this gimmick, Congress would effectively be using an important veterans care bill to hide a massive, unrelated spending binge.”
