'Blue water' veterans bill clears Senate, heads to White House for final signature

[nitpicker]

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2019/06/12/blue-water-veterans-bill-clears-senate-heads-to-white-house-for-final-signature/

'Blue water’ veterans bill clears Senate, heads to White House for final signature

By: Leo Shane III ?  11 hours ago

The Senate unanimously passed legislation codifying presumptive disability benefits status for so called “blue water” Vietnam veterans on Wednesday, sending the bill to the White House to become law. The move came roughly six months after the measure was stalled in the Senate by parliamentary objections and just a week after the end of a legal battle surrounding the Vietnam veterans’ benefits that has drug on for years.

The legislation, passed unanimously by the House last month, has been a focus of advocates fighting to ensure nearly 90,000 veterans who served on ships in the seas around Vietnam are granted the same Veterans Affairs benefits status as troops who served on the ground or on ships stationed close to shore.

Under current regulations, those troops were assumed to have been exposed to toxic defoliants like Agent Orange, and were given special fast-track status when illnesses related to that chemical contamination surfaced later in life.

But in 2002, VA officials ruled that presumptive status did not apply to the blue water veterans. As a result, they had to conclusively prove their identical illnesses were a result of toxic exposure and not issues that occurred after their military service.

Given the lack of chemical monitoring on the ships at the time and the decades that have passed since the exposure, many veterans found that decision an unfair and unrealistic barrier. Earlier this year, a federal court agreed, ordering the VA to return the blue water veterans their special disability status.

Last week, Department of Justice officials announced they would not appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, effectively ending the fight. But House lawmakers and several veterans groups pushed for the Senate to finalize the House’s blue water veterans bill, arguing that codifying the decision would ensure that future court cases would not produce a different result.

The bill now headed to the president’s desk does go further than the court ruling’s, expanding certain presumptive benefits to troops who served in the Korean Demilitarized Zone and to children of herbicide-exposed Thailand veterans born with spina bifida.
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[watoos]

1. What benefits were fast tracked?

My cousin was stationed at the perimeter with a slide rule watching where the 155 mm shells were hitting. He had to fight for years to get any benefits. He has been in a wheelchair for 40 years with MS-like symptoms because of Agent Orange.