A recent editorial by the Sandusky Register:

Lawmakers holding up legislation that would ensure veterans who become ill due to toxic exposure related to their military service in war get health and survivor benefits are shameless. They claim they want to support these veterans, but their actions say the opposite. The cost of such a program, and the avoidance of inflation, is more important than giving them their due benefits, they say.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, the Ohio lawmaker who represents portions of Erie and Huron counties, Sandusky County and Seneca County, is one of the legislators who voted against the SFC Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act.

Jordan refused to provide any explanation, aside from that which Russell Dye, a spokesperson for Jordan offered after a Register inquiry:

”…Jordan fully supports our nation’s veterans and believes it is vital they receive proper care for the effects of chemical exposure…We must ensure that the promises made to them are not broken.

Unfortunately, Democrats are using yet another budgeting gimmick in the Honoring Our PACT Act, a bill that will add more than $285 billion in direct spending. Veterans, and their families, deserve better than a Congress that makes our inflation problem worse and risks the economic security of future generations.”

In our view, Jordan’s “no” vote, and his inability to directly answer the question, “why did you vote against this,” connotates someone who is seemingly walking away from injured compatriots on the battlefield.

The answer from Jordan’s office is not responsive to the question and reeks of further noisy avoidance.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, both voted in favor of the PACT Act in the Senate in a show of bipartisan support. Brown, who has spearheaded the legislation and guided it through the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, on which he is a member, has repeatedly said the cost of providing health and survivor benefits for veterans injured or killed in war is “the cost of war.”

That, it seems to us, is a simple truth, and we should never walk away from injured veterans on the battlefield.

But it’s a truth that Jordan, his spokesman, and other politicians who now oppose this legislation will not address. Their opposition without explanation, shows they are, in essence, walking away from American military personnel on the battlefield.

— Sandusky Register, July 21, 2022