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The Senate bill passed on Tuesday would expand health care coverage for more than 3.5 million veterans.

The Democratic-controlled Senate on Tuesday advanced a bill aimed at providing adequate medical care for veterans exposed to toxic chemicals during their service. But 12 Senate Republicans voted against even considering this bipartisan proposal.

By an 86-12 margin, the Senate voted for cloture on a motion to begin consideration of the Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act of 2022 well more than the required 60-vote supermajority.

According to Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Jon Tester and Ranking Member Jerry Moran, the bill will expand the Department of Veterans Affairs health care eligibility to combat veterans who served after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, including more than 3.5 million veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals during their service. The bill will also expand research on toxic exposure and expand coverage for those exposed to Agent Orange and burn pits.

"In addition to providing historic relief to all generations of toxic-exposed veterans, this legislation will improve claims processing to meet the immediate and future needs of every veteran it serves," wrote Tester (D-MT) and Moran (R-KS) after they reached an agreement on a Senate version of the bill on May 18. "Together, we will continue working until Congress delivers on its commitment to passing long-lasting solutions and comprehensive reforms for those who served our country."

Despite the Senate's broad bipartisan support for the bill, 12 Republicans voted against advancing it: Sens. Richard Burr (NC), Bill Cassidy (LA), John Kennedy (LA), James Lankford (OK), Mike Lee (UT), Cynthia Lummis (WY), Rand Paul (KY), Mitt Romney (UT), Dan Sullivan (AK), Thom Tillis (NC), Pat Toomey (PA), and Todd Young (IN).

None of the 12 senators immediately gave a reason for why they voted against the bill either on the Senate floor or on Twitter.

The issue has been a top priority for President Joe Biden and his administration.

In his March State of the Union address, Biden noted that his own son's fatal cancer might have been caused by toxic exposure during his service in Iraq.

"When they came home, many of the world's fittest and best-trained warriors were never the same. Headaches. Numbness. Dizziness. A cancer that would put them in a flag-draped coffin," he said of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. "I know. One of those soldiers was my son, Major Beau Biden. We don't know for sure if a burn pit was the cause of his brain cancer or the diseases of so many of our troops. But Im committed to finding out everything we can."

In April, the Biden administration announced administrative steps to allow those exposed to burn pit chemicals during their military service to get disability benefits if they contracted respiratory cancers.

The White House has also pushed Congress to enact broader legislation. In May, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Senate bill "will not only help deliver more timely access to benefits and services for veterans and their survivors, it will also ensure that the Department of Veterans Affairs can act more nimbly to add future presumptive conditions when the evidence warrants."

A similar bill passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in March, 256-174. Though 34 Republicans backed that bill along with every single Democratic representative the vast majority of the GOP caucus voted no and argued that that $281.5 billion package was too expensive.

The Senate is now likely to approve its version of the bill and send it back to the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already endorsed the Senate package as "an important victory for Americas veterans, their families and caregivers, and indeed for all of America," and promised to immediately move it through the House and to Biden's desk.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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12 GOP senators oppose bill to expand health care to veterans exposed to toxic burn pits - The American Independent

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said on Sunday that a recession is likely within the next two years.

The former Obama administration official's prediction comes on the heels of an unexpected jump in the inflation rate announced on Friday. Summers's statement stands in contrast to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen's claim last week that a recession is not in the works.

WHITE HOUSE TALKS UP 'HISTORIC' ECONOMY AS INFLATION-WEARY VOTERS DOUBT BIDEN

I think theres certainly a risk of recession in the next year, Summers said on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday. I think given where weve gotten to, its more likely than not that well have a recession within the next two years.

Summers, who served as treasury secretary under former President Bill Clintonand as director of the National Economic Council under former President Barack Obama, has been outspoken in warning that President Joe Biden's economic policies are damaging the country.

In March 2021, Summers blasted Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan as the least responsible macroeconomic policy weve had in the last 40 years and warned that it would set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation."

Inflation soared to 8.6% for the 12 months ending in May, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revealed on Friday, despite the Federal Reserve's interest rate hikes.

There are concerns that the Feds aggressive interest rate hikes, in an effort to stave off inflation, could plunge the economy into a recession.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) predicted last week that the Fed would continue to raise interest rates until they reach the level of inflation.

I think the Federal Reserve is going to keep putting [interest rates] up a half a point every time they meet. I think that happens probably every four to six weeks until they reach the inflation rate," Paul said last week. "And inflation rate is 8.5%, and we're closer to the Fed funds rate being around 3% or so."

I think that that's in our future, but I think a recession and high unemployment is, too, and that's the way inflation gets cured," Paul added.

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Yellen, however, dismissed talk of a recession last week, saying, Dont look to me to announce it, while insisting that the fundamentals of the economy are strong as inflation rages.

Im not going to announce it. I dont think were going to have a recession, she said. Consumer spending is very strong. Investment spending is solid. I expect growth to slow down. We have a very strong economy. I know people are very upset, and rightfully so, about inflation. But theres nothing to suggest inflation if a recession is in the works.

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Summers: US recession likely within two years - Washington Examiner

WASHINGTON, D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) will highlight Republican efforts to overturn the District of Columbias gun violence prevention laws at tomorrows Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on the nations gun violence epidemic. Without statehood, a future Republican Congress could overturn D.C.s gun violence prevention laws. In previous Congresses, Republicans have introduced legislation to eliminate D.C.s gun violence prevention laws, including its ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and its universal background checks.

With the recent tragedy in Uvalde, Texas, I am grateful that Chairwoman Maloney is holding tomorrows extremely timely hearing, Norton said. The District of Columbia has worked to protect its citizens by enacting common-sense gun violence prevention laws, including banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. I am mindful that a future Republican Congress could overturn the laws of the duly elected D.C. Council and will highlight that possibility in tomorrows hearing. While I have defeated each effort in Congress to overturn D.C.s gun violence prevention laws, the ultimate remedy for congressional interference in local D.C. matters is statehood for D.C.

The following current Republican Members of Congress have introduced bills or amendments during their tenures to overturn D.C. gun violence prevention laws: Senator Rand Paul (KY), Senator Marco Rubio (FL), Senator Joni Ernst (IA), Representative Jim Jordan (OH), Representative Thomas Massie (KY), Representative Louie Gohmert (TX), and Representative David Schweikert (AZ).

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Norton to Highlight Republican Efforts to Overturn D.C. Gun Violence Prevention Laws at Hearing, Wednesday - House.gov

Anyone who has ever watched an old episode of The Untouchables or the Coen Brothers Millers Crossing (highly recommended) is no doubt familiar with the Thompson submachine gun, popularly known as the Tommy gun, a weapon favored during its heyday by the likes of Al Capone, John Dillinger and George Kelly Barnes, whose penchant for the device earned him the tantalizing sobriquet Machine Gun Kelly.

The Tommy gun was a particularly vicious piece of work, capable of ripping off 700 to 800 rounds per minute. The so-called Chicago Typewriter (gotta love that) was invented in 1918 for military use but adopted by various gangsters during the Prohibition Era for their own nefarious purposes, mowing down anyone including innocents within range.

Authorities eventually came to the conclusion that the weapons role in the ever-expanding number of dead bodies and buckets of blood rendered it hardly worth preserving. So, in 1934, Congress passed the National Firearms Act, which, among other things, required those possessing a Tommy gun to register it with the Treasury Department, be fingerprinted, pay a heavy tax $200, which today would come to about $4,000 and be listed on a national registry. Violating the act could result in up to 10 years in federal prison and forfeiture of all devices or firearms found in violation.

Lo and behold, miracle of miracles, sales of machine guns plummeted and the violence declined. According to The Washington Post, By 1937, federal officials reported that the sale of machine guns in the United States had practically ceased. In 1939, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that law didnt violate the Constitution.

While thousands of Tommy guns remained in circulation, anyone caught violating the provisions of the National Firearms Act could have the weapons confiscated and charged with tax evasion.

It is a good example of something that is little known, which is a gun control law that was pretty effective in keeping such weapons out of civilian hands, said Dr. Robert Spitzer a political scientist at the State University of New York at Cortland, during an interview with National Public Radio in 2013.

Congress took matters a step further in 1986 when it considered the Firearms Owners Protection Act, a measure that made it illegal for civilians to buy or sell any machine gun. The bill passed and was signed by the patron saint of conservative Republicans, President Ronald Reagan.

For good measure, it carried the support of now get this the National Rifle Association.

Now lets move forward a bit. By the 1990s the nation faced another plague of gun violence, this one brought on by the narcotics trade, just as the violence during the Roaring 20s was brought on by bootlegging. In 1994, President Bill Clinton championed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, a subsection of which banned the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms popularly known as assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines.

This time the NRA opposed what amounts to a gun safety measure. Regardless, it passed, albeit with a sunset provision that voided the law after 10 years. It passed, survived constitutional challenges in the courts, and, naturally, gun violence once again ebbed. A study that appeared in the January 2019 edition of The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, looking at data from 1981 to 2017, determined that mass-shooting fatalities were 70 percent less likely to occur during the period when the 10-year ban was in effect.

The semi-automatic weapons ban, along with the ban on large ammunition magazines, failed to survive after the 10-year period as a result of Republican opposition, and the country continues to pay the high price. Last month, for instance, Salvador Ramos, 18, entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, armed with an AR-15 style rifle in other words, an assault weapon proceeded to gun down 19 fourth graders and two teachers before members of a member of the U.S. Border Patrol tactical unit gained entry and killed the shooter.

For those keeping score at home, it was the third deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, behind the 2007 Virginia Tech University massacre that left 32 dead and 17 wounded and the 2012 annihilation at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, which resulted in 26 deaths, most of them babies, aged six and seven.

Imagine the horror.

So, given the facts, it would seem logical to revive the ban on semi-automatic weapons, which really are only good for killing fellow human beings, especially with the development of the bump stock, which basically converts them into machine guns, before were once again left aghast by another Robb Elementary School.

Good luck with that.

Lets ask our old pal, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Bowling Green.

I dont think banning whole types of weapons is consistent with the Constitution, Paul said during an interview with WBKO-TV in Bowling Green. I also dont think banning how much ammunition you can put into your gun at a time is something thats consistent with the principles of self-defense or the Constitution.

Nothing uttered by Paul of course, was consistent with the principles of protecting our children from being decapitated as a result of ending up on the wrong end of a fusillade of bullets. Nothing he said was consistent with the principles of protecting one young survivor from having to smear herself in a dead classmates blood to convince the shooter that she, too, was dead. And there was nothing consistent with the principle of saving devastated families from having to provide a DNA sample so their mutilated child could be properly identified.

Nope, its all about some phony baloney constitutional principle that has been rejected both in regard to the Tommy gun and assault weapons by the courts in the past. Maintaining killing machines like the AR-15 so ranchers out west can shoot prairie dogs.

Sorry, folks, but that is some sick, bloody thinking.

Then theres the old reliable, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-SomewhereorotherLewisCounty, the pride of the 4th Congressional District, who refers to some House proposals to address the semi-automatic weapons ban as gun-grabbing legislation, maintaining during a recent floor speech that efforts to address mass shootings are unserious, unconstitutional and, most troubling, dangerous provisions.

Massies sophistry is that everyone should pack because criminals dont follow the law, a dead-end argument that fails to deal with why the nation has laws in the first place because failure to comply carries consequences. And he maintains that school children are sitting ducks, essentially because teachers cant keep guns in their desks, which would, of course, potentially open up a whole, new can of worms.

Does hardening our schools work? Massie asked. Does letting trained teachers and professional staff carry, does it protect children? We know it does because in every single school district, every school that has allowed them to carry there hasnt just been no mass shootings, there hasnt been a single shooting.

There have been any number of schools that havent been converted into a scholastic variation of Eddyville State Penitentiary that, likewise, havent experienced a fatal attack. And he fails to note that armed police were on the scene within four minutes, according to reports, before the annihilation began, and did nothing for more than an hour.

At one point about 150 officers were on the scene and sat idly by. The school had a security force but, inexplicably, a resource officer was not on campus at the time, according to reports. There has been no further explanation.

The unspeakable Uvalde tragedy gives the lie to claims that only good guys with guns defeat bad guys with guns the good guys were on the scene and did nothing. It is the wide distribution of these killing machines more than any other place on Gods earth that are killing off our children one by one and folks like Paul and Massie are so bling they cannot see.

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Bill Straub: Despite tired 'guns-don't-kill' and 'good-guys-with-guns' narratives, guns remain the problem - User-generated content

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:May 20, 2022Contact: Press_Paul@paul.senate.gov, 202-224-4343

WASHINGTON, D.C. Recently, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) Ranking Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, recognized CoreTrans of Somerset, Kentucky, as the Senate Small Business of the Week.Dr. Paul entered the following into the Congressional Record:As you all know, the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic has burdened the global economy with tangled supply chains, drastically prolonged shipping schedules, and an insatiable level of consumer demand. Given this current climate it gives me great pleasure to honor a Kentucky small business operating on the front lines of the supply chain crisis. Founded in 2002, CoreTrans was started by Brian Whitaker, a third generation Whitaker in the transportation business. Brian and the whole team at CoreTrans have played a vital role in the recovery from the pandemic and subsequent government lockdowns and they continue to support local commerce within the community.Brian Whitaker is the youngest of three generations of truckers. Perhaps it is that collective expertise between him and his family that has allowed Brian to lead CoreTrans through years of tremendous growth. Getting his start in the early years of the new millennium, CoreTrans started out with twenty five trucks. Now, CoreTrans includes a fleet of over 150 trucks, 300-53 dry van trailers, and a driver fleet of 200 drivers. Their trucks and trailers are equipped with state of the art aerodynamics and satellite based mobile communication systems, which allows their team to track and monitor all vehicles on a 24-hour basis. Though the business is outfitted with impressive technology, the CoreTrans staff and their years of experience are the most vital part of the operation.The leadership and staff at CoreTrans understand that in this fast-paced world of online deliveries and instant gratification, time is money. Therefore, they operate with the knowledge that there is no room for error or broken promises. The mission of CoreTrans is to provide safe, on-time delivery of customer freight at a competitive rate with the most efficient and responsive customer service in the industry. Their name tells the whole story CoreTrans, a name that highlights their commitment to efficiency just like their slogan: At the CORE of Your Supply Chain! Just take a look at CoreTrans track record and you will see that their slogan is more than just words on a sign. The team has won a slew of awards throughout the past decade, including: the 2012 National Safety Award, 2012 Carrier of the Year for Wausau Paper (a large customer of theirs), 2013 Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year, 2015 Great West Award, as well as several awards from Pulaski Countys March of Dimes.Though CoreTrans maintains a reputation for its dependability and strong customer service, Brian Whitaker understands that giving back to the community is just as important as running an efficient fleet. Even before the pandemic struck there was a shortage of crucial transportation workers. In 2019, Bloomberg estimated that the U.S. lacked roughly 300,000 truck drivers needed to fill the predicted level of consumer demand. Understanding this shortage, Brian decided to take action and made a donation to Somerset Community College (SCC) to kick-start their new truck driver-training program. That year SCC received a 2007 Volvo sleeper truck courtesy of CoreTrans, which allowed the students to train in a real work setting while enrolled in the Colleges commercial drivers license or truck driver training program. Their donation not only helps the students of SCC, it bolsters the local and regional economy by creating a pipeline of truck drivers to fulfill Kentuckys needs.In 2021, Brian demonstrated that his charitable spirit expands beyond the students at SCC, as Western Kentucky dealt with the aftermath of devastating December tornados. Seeing how so many of their Western neighbors lost everything right before the Christmas season, CoreTrans teamed up with Ricky Thomas, owner of Wildcat Used Cars, to collect supplies for the donation to Mayfield residents. Mr. Thomas knew the desire to help out the tornado-torn areas was strong within his community, but the logistics of hundreds of people driving several hours individually to donate goods was not practical. Instead, Mr. Thomas utilized his car lot as a drop-off site and CoreTrans donated one of their tractor trailers for the job of transporting the supplies to Mayfield. Together, these two small businesses answered Kentuckians call during their time of need and in true CoreTrans spirit, they did it in the most efficient way possible. When Brian Whitaker opened up shop in 2002, he intended to create more than just a trucking company. His purpose was to start a business on which Kentucky could depend, on the road and in the warehouse. In executing this mission, CoreTrans became a business that supports local and regional commerce, fosters job creation, strengthens the supply chain, and carries out a vital part of our nations economy by providing everyday citizens with the goods they need. Congratulations to Brian Whitaker and the entire team at CoreTrans. I wish them the best of luck and look forward to seeing their continued growth and success in Kentucky.As Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, Dr. Paul continues the tradition of honoring Americas small businesses and entrepreneurs. The Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship oversees proposed legislation on matters relating to the Small Business Administration and investigates all problems relating to Americas small businesses.

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Dr. Rand Paul Honors CoreTrans of Somerset, Kentucky, as the Senate Small Business of the Week - Senator Rand Paul