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Biden: Better Treatment Needed for Veterans Exposed to Toxic Air in War Zones

On his first Veterans Day in office, U.S. President Joe Biden ordered his administration Thursday to provide better medical treatment for veterans exposed to toxic air and to study the diseases they may have contracted while serving overseas. 

For years, American service members were exposed to open-air fire pits during tours of duty in Iraqi and Afghan war zones. Dangerous materials such as electronics, vehicles and human waste were routinely sprayed with jet fuel and set ablaze, spewing toxic fumes and carcinogens into the air. 

For Biden, the directive is personal. He has suggested, without proof, that the cancer that killed his son Beau in 2015 was linked to exposure to burn pits during his military deployment to Iraq. 

“He volunteered to join the National Guard at age 32 because he thought he had an obligation to go,” Biden said at a Service Employees International Union convention in 2019. “And because of exposure to burn pits, in my view, I can’t prove it yet, he came back with stage 4 glioblastoma.”

Biden laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery outside Washington on Thursday to honor U.S. veterans. In a short address, he said retired veterans and those who are serving now are “the spine of this country.” 

“We’ve asked so much of you for so long,” he said. “Our country is grateful.” 

He urged veterans who are struggling with medical problems or thoughts of suicide to reach out for help. 

The new studies related to toxins will initially center on lung problems suffered by troops exposed to contaminated air and the potential connection to rare respiratory cancers, according to senior White House officials, but will expand as possible links to other ailments are identified.

In August, the Department of Veterans Affairs began processing claims for veterans suffering from asthma, rhinitis and sinusitis based on exposure to the pits. New rules will allow veterans to make claims within 10 years of their service and change what symptoms count and why. 

“Exposure to contaminants and environmental hazards poses a major health concern for veterans of all generations,” the White House said. But it added, “There are also gaps and delays in the scientific evidence demonstrating conclusive links between known exposures and health impacts, leaving many veterans without access to Department of Veterans Affairs benefits and high-quality treatment to address significant health conditions.” 

The White House said it took decades for the government to compensate Vietnam-era veterans for their exposure to Agent Orange.

“For the newest generation of veterans, concerns about burn pits and other exposures continue to mount,” it said. 

Veterans Day in the U.S. is commemorated on November 11 to honor everyone who served in the U.S. armed forces. It originally was called Armistice Day, to mark the end of World War I.
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Report Lists 13 Instances of Illegal Political Campaigning by Trump Appointees 

A federal agency charged with making sure that government employees do not use their positions to influence elections released a scathing report this week, finding that at least 13 senior members of the administration of former President Donald Trump, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, engaged in “willful violation” of the Hatch Act, a federal law limiting their political activities.

The report, released by the Office of Special Counsel, reveals a major problem for the United States when it comes to preventing senior administration officials from misusing their positions for political gain. According to the OSC, the only person in a position to punish Hatch Act violations by the most senior officials in the executive branch is the president.

“Indeed, the 2020 election revealed that, at least with respect to an administration’s senior-most officials, the Hatch Act is only as effective as the White House decides it will be,” the report found. “Where, as happened here, the White House chooses to ignore the Hatch Act’s requirements, then the American public is left with no protection against senior administration officials using their official authority for partisan political gain in violation of the law.”

Ethics laws seen as insufficient

Liz Hempowicz, public policy director for the Project on Government Oversight, an independent good-government group, told VOA the unprosecuted violations revealed in the report go to the heart of what many Americans see as the biggest problem with the country.

“The number one concern for constituents across the board is corruption in government, and even more specifically, corruption in government that is never held accountable,” she said.

Hempowicz decried “violations of an ethics law where the watchdog organization in charge of enforcing the law cannot or will not bring enforcement actions against very high-level individuals who violate the law incredibly publicly.”

Hempowicz continued, “It just goes to some of the main concerns we’ve heard from the public. And it reinforces the idea that these ethics laws that we have to protect the people’s interests are not sufficient.”

Multiple violations

The report lists a large number of violations of the Hatch Act during Trump’s term in office, but much of the report is focused on the months immediately prior to the 2020 presidential election, and particularly to the Republican National Convention (RNC). Trump sparked controversy by deciding to hold the convention, a purely political event typically staged in a large city outside Washington, on the grounds of the White House itself.

The report says that while it may have been a breach of political norms, it was not de facto illegal to hold the RNC at the White House. However, during the convention, the OSC documented individual violations of the law.

During the RNC, Pompeo and then-Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf both appeared in their official capacity in events designed to improve the former president’s chances of reelection. Pompeo, who was on a diplomatic trip to Israel at the time, delivered a livestreamed address to the convention. Wolf prerecorded an official naturalization ceremony, in which immigrants to the United States officially become citizens, for a similar purpose.

Numerous violators

The report lists numerous other senior officials who, on one or more occasions, used appearances made in their official capacity to boost the former president’s reelection campaign.

They include then-Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette; then-Senior Counselor to the President Kellyanne Conway; then-Senior Adviser to the President Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law; and then-White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany.

Others were then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows; then-Senior Adviser to the President for Policy Stephen Miller; then-national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and several others.

As elected officials, neither Trump nor former Vice President Mike Pence was subject to the Hatch Act during his term in office, and therefore broke no rules by campaigning in his capacity as president or vice president.

However, the OSC concluded that the president and vice president knew about the frequent and ongoing violations of the law, pointing out that the agency had briefed the White House multiple times and had sent “an unprecedented 15 warning letters to senior administration officials notifying them that they had violated the Hatch Act.”

Calls for change

The OSC is led by Special Counsel Henry J. Kerner, who was nominated by Trump and confirmed to his position by the then Republican-led Senate in 2017. His office regularly brings enforcement actions against more junior executive branch appointees. However, the agency has long believed that its authority ends with Senate-confirmed members of the administration and people appointed directly by the president.

According to the OSC, the report was issued “to educate employees about Hatch Act-prohibited activities, highlight the enforcement challenges that OSC confronted during its investigations, and deter similar violations in the future.”

In recognition of its inability to effectively enforce the law, the OSC recommended a number of legislative changes. Among other things, the agency is asking Congress to give it the authority to apply monetary penalties to senior administration officials for Hatch Act violations, even after they have left office. The agency also wants the ability to issue regulations related to the Hatch Act, and suggests that Congress determine what areas of the White house complex can be used for political activity.

‘It was egregious’

Experts concerned with good governance and transparency said there was nothing particularly unexpected in the report, but they praised it for drawing attention to the significant gaps in enforcement that allowed the violations to take place in the first place.

“I don’t think there was anything that was surprising,” said Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a group that promotes good government. “We all saw the activity as it occurred. It was egregious.”

Nevertheless, he told VOA, the report is important.

“We have a tendency, as a society, to move on from crises … without going back and following the thread about what the consequences are … and we don’t learn as a result,” said Stier. “The OSC report is a very important look at the need for reform of the basic infrastructure of the way our government operates.”

The OSC and other watchdog agencies like it were set up more than 40 years ago, in the wake of the Watergate scandal that brought down former President Richard Nixon.

“It’s about time that we revisit, in our present world, what we need by way of structure inside government to ensure that we continue to have a first-grade, corruption-free and effective government,” Stier said.
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Biden Visiting Baltimore Port to Tout Infrastructure Spending

U.S. President Joe Biden is headed to the eastern port of Baltimore, Maryland, on Wednesday to trumpet his newly approved $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending package that he hopes will improve the efficiency of U.S. dock operations and end the logjam of container ships that are anchored off the U.S. Pacific coast waiting to be unloaded. 

The construction measure is aimed chiefly at repairing the country’s deteriorating roads and bridges and expanding broadband internet service throughout the U.S. But it also includes $17 billion for port infrastructure and waterways and another $25 billion for airports to ease the shipment of consumer goods. 

Biden plans to sign the legislation in the coming days, when key lawmakers return to Washington from a weeklong recess. 

Ahead of Biden’s visit to Baltimore, the White House said, “Port infrastructure and waterway investments will double as an investment in environmental justice in and around port facilities by deploying zero-emission technologies and reducing idling and emissions, which impair air quality in adjacent neighborhoods and communities, often which are historically disadvantaged.” 

It said the new funding was especially needed because some rankings show that no U.S. airports rank among the top 25 worldwide for efficiency or ports in the top 50. 

The dozens of container ships currently anchored off the country’s Pacific coast, waiting for consumer goods shipped from Asian ports to be unloaded, have left many U.S. retailers with dwindling stocks of clothes, household products and vehicles to sell heading into the end-of-the-year holiday gift-giving season. Consumer spending accounts for 70% of the U.S. economy, the world’s largest. 

The U.S. economy has continued to advance from the depths of the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but with conflicting effects for American workers and shoppers, according to two new reports Wednesday. 

One Labor Department report Wednesday showed that first-time claims for unemployment compensation have now fallen for six straight weeks, down to 267,000 last week, just above the 256,000 total in mid-March 2020, when the coronavirus first swept into the U.S. 

But Labor said in a second report that the consumer price index increased at a three-decade-high pace in October, up at an annualized 6.2% rate. The report indicates this largely results from consumer demand for hard-to-get goods and the supply chain bottleneck at U.S. ports. 

Food shoppers — which is to say, all consumers — have noticed the higher prices in grocery stores, while motorists are facing sharply increased prices at gas pumps and used car prices have jumped as well. 

“We are making progress on our recovery,” Biden said in a statement after release of the two reports. “Jobs are up, wages are up, home values are up, personal debt is down, and unemployment is down. We have more work to do, but there is no question that the economy continues to recover and is in much better shape today than it was a year ago.” 

But he acknowledged the effect of higher consumer prices on American households, a political liability for the president. 

“Inflation hurts Americans’ pocketbooks, and reversing this trend is a top priority for me,” he said. 

Biden blamed higher energy costs and supply chain shortcomings for the higher prices consumers are paying. 

The Baltimore port Biden is visiting is not one of the country’s biggest since it is not located directly on the Atlantic Ocean, with ships having to sail north through the Chesapeake Bay to reach the city. It ranks well behind huge ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, on the country’s Pacific coast, yet still unloaded more than 43 million tons of goods in 2019 before the coronavirus pandemic limited shipping throughout the world last year. 

The White House said the infrastructure spending is needed because “decades of neglect and underinvestment in our infrastructure have left the links in our goods movement supply chains struggling to keep up with the rapid and persistent increase in goods movement that the pandemic has generated.”
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Former US Senator Max Cleland Dies at 79

Max Cleland, who lost three limbs to a Vietnam War hand grenade blast yet went on to serve as a U.S. senator from Georgia, died on Tuesday. He was 79.

Cleland died at his home in Atlanta from congestive heart failure, his personal assistant Linda Dean told The Associated Press. 

Cleland, a Democrat, served one term in the U.S. Senate, losing a 2002 re-election bid to Republican Saxby Chambliss. He also served as administrator of the U.S. Veterans Administration, as Georgia Secretary of State and as a Georgia state senator.

Cleland was a U.S. Army captain in Vietnam when he lost an arm and two legs while picking up a fallen grenade in 1968. For years, Cleland blamed himself for dropping the grenade, but he learned in 1999 that another soldier had dropped it.

Cleland’s loss in the Senate generated enduring controversy after the Chambliss campaign aired a commercial that displayed images of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and questioned Cleland’s commitment to defense and Homeland Security. Sen. John McClain was among those who condemned the move by his fellow Republican.

Cleland also led the United States Veterans Administration, appointed in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter and holding the post until 1981. Cleland served in the Georgia Senate from 1971-1975 and was Georgia’s Secretary of State from 1983 until 1996.

“Max Cleland was one of the most remarkable persons I have ever met in my life,” Former Georgia governor and fellow Democrat Roy Barnes said. “His sacrifice and service will long be remembered as best of what it is to be a Georgian and an American. I will miss his laughter and good cheer; his optimism in the face of tragedy and his courage to persevere.”

A native of Lithonia, Cleland suffered grievous injuries on April 8, 1968, near Khe Sanh, as he reached for the grenade he thought had fallen from his belt when he jumped from a helicopter. 

“When my eyes cleared, I looked at my right hand. It was gone. Nothing but a splintered white bone protruded from my shredded elbow,” Cleland wrote in his 1980 memoir, “Strong at the Broken Places.” 

After fellow soldiers made a frantic effort to stop his bleeding and he was helicoptered back to a field hospital, Cleland wrote that he begged a doctor to save one of his legs, but there wasn’t enough left. 

“What poured salt into my wounds was the possible knowledge that it could have been my grenade,” he said in a 1999 interview.

But later that year, former Marine Cpl. David Lloyd, who said he was one of the first to reach Cleland after the explosion, came forward to say he treated another soldier at the scene who was sobbing uncontrollably and saying, “It was my grenade, it was my grenade.”

Before Vietnam, Cleland had been an accomplished college swimmer and basketball player, standing 6-foot-2 and beginning to develop an interest in politics. Returning home a triple-amputee, Cleland recalled being depressed and worried about his future, yet still interested in running for office.

“I sat in my mother and daddy’s living room and took stock in my life,” Cleland said in a 2002 interview. “No job. No hope of a job. No offer of a job. No girlfriend. No apartment. No car. And I said, `This is a great time to run for the state Senate.”’

Nevertheless, he won a state Senate seat, becoming part of a cadre of young senators that included Barnes, the future governor. After a failed 1974 campaign for lieutenant governor and his stint heading the VA, Cleland was elected as Georgia’s Secretary of State in 1982.

A dozen years later, he opted to seek the seat of retiring Sen. Sam Nunn, but served only one term. Polls showed he had been leading in his re-election effort before the devastating Chambliss ad. 

“Accusing me of being soft on homeland defense and Osama bin Laden is the most vicious exploitation of a national tragedy and attempt at character assassination I have ever witnessed,” Cleland said at the time. 

Sen. Jon Ossoff, the first Democrat to hold the seat since Cleland’s defeat, called him “a hero, a patriot, a public servant, and a friend.” 

Cleland later served as a director of the Export-Import Bank, and he was appointed by President Barack Obama to be secretary of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

In his memoir, Cleland said that through crises and defeats, “I have learned that it is possible to become strong at the broken places.”
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The Feel-Good Moment for Infrastructure Is Over, Now Comes the Wait 

Last week’s passage of a major bipartisan infrastructure spending package in the House of Representatives was broadly seen as a victory for President Joe Biden at a time when he desperately needed one.

But unlike some of Biden’s earlier legislative wins, this one is not likely to produce immediate changes in the lives of most Americans.

In the early months of his presidency, Biden was able to secure major stimulus packages that sent cash flowing from the federal government directly into the bank accounts of millions of Americans, many of whom were facing financial struggles due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The infrastructure package, which tacked $550 billion of new spending onto $650 billion that was already budgeted, is not expected to work that way. Its promise of investment in electric-vehicle charging stations, highways, ports, airports, broadband, a smart electrical grid and much more, will play out over years, rather than months, analysts caution.

“People think that since the bill has been passed … that you’re going to start seeing things this week. It’s not so simple,” said K.N. Gunalan, a former president of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) and a senior vice president with the engineering firm AECOM.

“Procurement on a typical project can take from a few months to a couple of years depending on the magnitude and complexity of the project,” he told VOA. “I want people to be hopeful, but not too anxious, because in order to do it right, these things take a little bit of time.”

‘A generational shift’

Experts said that the fact that it will take years for the full effects of the new investment to be seen shouldn’t obscure the reality that it has the potential to significantly transform the country.

“This is a generational shift in how and what types of projects get invested in,” Joseph Kane, a fellow in the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told VOA. “I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, with $550 billion over five years, that this is on par with New Deal-era levels of spending.” 

The New Deal era was marked by a massive wave of government spending on infrastructure and other public projects meant to help bring the United States out of the Great Depression. 

“It’s also important not to overlook, beyond the dollar figures, just what the bill promises to do, which is investing in forward-looking designs and technology for a 21st century vision of infrastructure,” Kane said.

‘Infrastructure decade’ 

In the wake of the bill’s passage and the run-up to a presidential signing ceremony expected when Congress returns from its current recess, there have been many joking references to “infrastructure week” — something the Trump administration touted more than once while trying in vain to get Congress to move on its previous efforts to make a serious investment in infrastructure.

But Michael Hendrix, a senior fellow and director of state and local policy at the Manhattan Institute, said in an interview with VOA that the passage of the bill means that the country needs to transition to a much longer timeline.

“After this bill is signed, infrastructure week will become infrastructure decade,” Hendrix said. “I think we really have to look at a 10-year time horizon to get a bigger sense of the impact here. And even then, just because the spending will come online, and projects will come online, doesn’t mean that they’re going to be finished within that 10-year time horizon.” 

Short-term action 

While nobody ought to expect new bridges to begin going up overnight, there will be some action in the near term — it just won’t be the kind that most people notice..

The legislation approved by Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate gives Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg a pot of $16 billion that he will be able to direct to projects with little or no delay. Hendrix, of the Manhattan Institute, said that he expects much of that will go toward funding preliminary studies and planning, to help states and localities begin preparing for when the full funding begins to come through the system. 

Additionally, work could begin more quickly on routine maintenance of existing infrastructure that has been deferred, sometimes for many years, because of lack of funding, Gunalan, the former ASCE president, told VOA.

“I know it’s easier to get excited about new projects, but agencies have been struggling for years to maintain their existing assets in good repair,” he said. “Maintenance of existing assets is probably something that can be done sooner than any new projects can come online.”

Medium term 

A number of major projects that have been in the planning phase — some for years — could begin construction within the next few years, even before the end of Biden’s first term in January 2025. 

“I would suspect in the next four years, we will start to see a lot of major infrastructure projects get under construction — and people will see that construction under way,” said Yonah Freemark, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute in Washington. 

Some of those projects, he said in an interview, include the Gateway Tunnel, a new rail tunnel between New York and New Jersey; replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge, a badly overburdened link between Covington, Kentucky, and Cincinnati; a new rail bridge across the Potomac River connecting Washington, D.C., and northern Virginia; and a continuation of work on high-speed rail networks in California. 

“Americans will see all those projects under construction in the next few years,” said Freemark. “Unfortunately, we won’t see them open anytime soon.”

Biden will still promote the package 

The delay between his signing of the infrastructure bill into law and the beginning of major construction projects will not prevent the president from celebrating its passage. This week, he is expected to begin a series of visits to sites around the country that will benefit from the legislation. 

Biden was vice president when President Barack Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, an effort to stimulate the economy with a surge of investment in infrastructure projects. While the act generated significant spending on infrastructure, it took much longer to roll out than the administration expected.

The Obama administration did not make much of an effort to bring Americans’ attention to the Recovery Act’s projects when they did come on line, leading to criticism from fellow Democrats, who saw that as a missed opportunity.

Biden does not appear eager to expose himself to the same criticism. His infrastructure tour will be supplemented by appearances by multiple Cabinet secretaries across the country over the coming weeks and months, reminding voters of the projects that, if not under way, are at least on the way.

Biden’s first stop will be the Port of Baltimore on Wednesday. Backlogs at U.S. ports have been blamed for the current supply-chain problems that have left many goods difficult for Americans to find and have contributed to a sharp rise in inflation. A visit to the port will allow Biden to make the argument to Americans that his administration is taking action to at least begin resolving the problem.
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Latest Exit From Fed’s Board Gives Biden Three Slots to Fill 

Randal Quarles announced Monday that he will resign from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors at the end of the year after completing a four-year term as its top bank regulator, opening up another vacancy on the Fed’s influential board for President Joe Biden to fill.

Quarles has served as the Fed’s first vice chair of supervision, which gave him wide-ranging authority over the banking system. In that role, he oversaw a broad loosening of some of the financial regulations that were put in place after the 2008-2009 global financial crisis and recession. 

Quarles’ deregulatory approach prompted criticism from some on the Fed and from many progressives. It has also sparked resistance from progressives to the potential re-nomination of Jerome Powell as Fed chair, who has voted in favor of Quarles’ regulatory changes.

With Powell’s term as chair ending in February, an announcement is expected sometime this month on whether Biden will offer him a second four-year term. The president is considered likely to renominate Powell, although he could decide instead to elevate Lael Brainard, who is the lone Democrat on the Fed’s seven-member board, to the position of chair.

Besides Quarles’ soon-to-be vacated position on the board, a second slot is vacant and a third will open up in January, when Vice Chair Richard Clarida’s term will expire. Counting the seat held by the Fed chair, that gives Biden a total of four potential slots to fill.

The president may decide to renominate Powell while also promoting Brainard to replace Quarles as vice chair for supervision. That move could potentially mollify at least some of Powell’s critics. Brainard cast some dissenting votes against Quarles’ deregulatory efforts.

With several vacancies to fill, Biden has an opportunity to shift the Fed’s board toward a more Democratic-dominated one. That would undercut one key argument against Powell: That even if Biden elevated Brainard to the Fed’s top bank supervisory post, Powell could ignore or override efforts she might take to toughen financial rules. If Biden were to successfully appoint three new governors to the Fed’s board, Democratic appointees would outnumber Republican ones. 

Late last month, in an appearance on CNN, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen defended Powell against any notion that he has weakened bank rules. Yellen asserted that financial regulations were “markedly strengthened” under Ben Bernanke’s Fed leadership, during her own subsequent term as chair and under Powell, as well.

Members of the Board of Governors have permanent votes at each Fed meeting on interest-rate policy, a powerful tool that affects hiring and the economy. The 12 regional Fed bank presidents also attend policymaking meetings, though only five of them are able to vote on the Fed’s decisions. The New York Fed president holds a permanent vote, and the regional bank presidents hold four votes that rotate among them each year.

The Fed governors also vote on financial regulations, and they could take steps to regulate some cryptocurrencies, known as stablecoins. Some of the officials, including Brainard and Powell, have discussed incorporating climate change considerations into the Fed’s bank oversight, a possibility that has met with opposition from congressional Republicans.

With four slots open, the Biden administration could nominate several candidates as a package. Potential nominees for the three vacancies on the Fed’s board include Lisa Cook, an economist at Michigan State University who would be the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor, and Sarah Bloom Raskin, who previously served as a Fed governor and as a financial regulator in Maryland. 

Another potential nominee is William Spriggs, chief economist at the AFL-CIO and an economics professor at Howard University. 

Karine Jean-Pierre, a White House spokeswoman, declined to say how Quarles’ departure might influence Biden’s selections for the board. 

“All I can say is this is incredibly important to the president, and he’s taking this seriously,” Jean-Pierre said at Monday’s briefing. 

At a Senate hearing in September, Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat who chairs the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees Fed nominations, said, “It’s time we had a Black woman on the Board of Governors.” 
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Minnesota Lawmaker Sees Role as Cultural Bridge Builder

The different diaspora groups that make up the United States inevitably have fought for representation through the voting process. VOA is profiling a group of emerging politicians with direct ties to Africa who are changing the face of American politics. One is Omar Fateh, whose parents came from Somalia.
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