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Agent Orange spending also concerns GOP lawmaker

RALEIGH (AP) - The leading Republican on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee said Monday that he also has concerns about a proposal that would spend billions of dollars on disability compensation for Vietnam veterans who get heart disease.

North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr added his voice to leading Democrats on the committee who have reservations about the spending and plan to discuss the issue at a Capitol Hill hearing this week. Because of concerns about the defoliant Agent Orange, the Department of Veterans Affairs wants to allow tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans to get compensation for heart disease, a common ailment for older adults.

Burr said he shares some of the same concerns raised by Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a Vietnam combat veteran.

"We'd like to make sure that, one, the science has a causal link, and two, that the defined population is an appropriate one," Burr said in an interview, his first public comments on the topic.

Congress set up a system two decades ago so that the VA could automatically grant benefits to veterans who served in Vietnam during a 13-year period and later got one of the ailments linked to Agent Orange. Compensation has been approved for a series of ailments with strong indications of an association to the defoliant, including Hodgkin's disease, soft-tissue cancers and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

But that list is also growing to include common ailments for which decades of research has found only the possibility of a link, including diabetes, prostate cancer and lung cancer. The Associated Press reported last month that some 270,000 Vietnam veterans - more than one-quarter of the 1 million receiving disability checks - are getting compensation for diabetes. It is now the most frequently compensated disability for Vietnam veterans, ahead of post-traumatic stress and hearing loss.

The VA's latests proposal, which will go into effect at the end of October unless Congress acts to block it, adds heart disease along with Parkinson's disease and certain types of leukemia. The agency estimates that it could cost up to $67 billion in the next decade.

The spending has also drawn scrutiny from the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit commission, former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson.

Veterans advocates have said that it would be unreasonable for veterans to have to prove on a case-by-case basis that their illness came from Agent Orange. Burr said the catchall phrasing that allows a veteran to get benefits for serving just one day in Vietnam may be overly broad.

"At some point we will have to look at the definition of exposure," he said.

And the sweet little southern gal says " F them!"

Aye, Aye!!!