U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough expressed confidence Sunday the Senate has enough votes to pass a bill to provide health care and benefits to 3.5 million veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, even after Republicans stalled the legislation.
established presumptive conditions, that is to say taking the burden of proof off veterans for veterans that have 12 different conditions as a result of their service in iraq and afghanistan and other places like uzbekistan, somalia. the president is moving on you the smartly on this and aggressively. in terms of what happens, in terms of amendments and everything else up there, i guess what i d say is, these folks have waited long enough. let s just get it done. and also let s not be for a proposal that places artificial caps on year by year and then functionally at the end of those ten years, makes this fund go away. let s not sign up to that because at the end of the day, the risk of that is going to be rationing of care to veterans. is the bill we re told schumer is going to bring it up again. he s offered toomey an opportunity to vote on the amendment, although it doesn t sound like that s going to be enough for senator toomey. do you think it will pass this time?
for to allow a vote on the bill well, let s first of all, let s be clear. if my amendment passes and we strip out this completely unrelated provision with $400 billion, i will vote for the bill. so, that s number one. look, cloture is not blocking the bill. what cloture vote means, there can be no more amendment votes. i might have some colleagues who have a couple of amendments. we ve been allowed no amendment votes on the biggest change to the va in, i don t know how long. so, i think we ought to have a few votes. i want to have my amendment considered because i think this is important. we could have done this a month ago, jake. now, tester wants this bill to pass. i believe he and his staff are working in good faith with us to get to a resolution but some democrats simply want to say, no, you don t get to change anything. we don t have any more debate or amendments, we re just going to jam this through. that s the source of the tension. but it s not enough for you
win back the house. when you can t afford gas, putting things back on the grocery, consumer costs are high. this bill is not going to do enough quickly enough to bring things down. these are top, good headlines. the p.a.c.t. act is a great headline. thanks for being here. appreciate it. how australia s new prime minister is taking on the climate crisis. plus, is australia going to break away from the queen? prime minister anthony albanese is here for an exclusive first u.s. interview. that s next. some people have minor jojoint pain, plus high blood pressure. and since pain relievers may affect blood pressure, they can t just take anything for their pain. tylenol® is th#1 dr. recommended pain relief brand for those with high blood presre. if you have questis on whether tylenol is right for you, talk to your doctor.
are there enough republicans who voted for the bill in june, voted against it last week, are going to vote for the bill like senator daines might be an example? when you reference the vote in june, when 84 senators voted for it, there had been one change since then. just a single change related to something completely unrelated to this issue that we re they somehow have insisted at the last minute here be debated. so, if everybody does what they did before, this has 84 votes. so, i think they should just get on with it, have the vote. one separate matter, 24 senate democrats sent you a letter this week urging you to allow abortion services at veterans hospitals and analysis by the national partnership for women found nearly 400,000 female veterans of reproductive age live in states certain or likely to ban abortion. will the va take this measure