Vets stage sit-in at Capitol over burn pits vote

A group of veterans is staging a sit-in at the Capitol in response to Senate Republicans blocking a bill that would extend health care benefits to millions of veterans who were exposed to toxins during their service.

Twenty-five senators went from supporting the Sgt. 1st Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our PACT Act when it passed the Senate 84-14 last month to helping filibuster the bill when a technically updated version was blocked 55-42 on Wednesday.

“We got punched in the gut, right by those 25 senators that flipped their vote from yesterday,” Burn Pits 360 Executive Director and co-founder Rosie Torres told The Hill late Thursday.

Torres said the veterans rights group was spending the night on the steps of the U.S. Capitol “as a message to those senators, those 25 senators and asking them to right the wrong.”

“They shouldn’t be here, and to know that we’re in that America where they’ve turned their backs on veterans and their families are sick and dying. It’s disgusting. But if this is what we have to do to get the bill passed, and at all costs, all measures, we’re going to get it done,” she said.

The group later tweeted it would remain outside the Capitol until the next cloture vote on the bill, which is expected Monday.

The PACT Act was initially passed by the Senate before being tweaked by the House and sent back to the Senate for a second vote, where 24 Republicans and one Democrat voted against the bill.

“This is what it’s come to. Veterans. The sick, the dying. Fed up. Pulling an all nighter to support their fellow vets. This is the hell their service has brought them,” comedian Jon Stewart, a longtime advocate for veterans’ and first-responders’ health care, tweeted in response to the announcement of a “Fire Watch” hosted by veterans on Thursday night.

Mychael Schnell contributed.