Ted Budd, unfit for ser­vice; Hon­or­ing our PACT Act

Let me state the point up front and clear­ly, Ted Budd, among oth­ers that vot­ed against the Hon­or­ing our PACT Act on 3 March 2022 in the House, should not con­tin­ue to serve in elect­ed of­fice. A vet­er­an of Op­er­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom (OIF), I find it de­spi­ca­ble that any­one would play pol­i­tics with our vet­er­ans. The Hon­or­ing our PACT Act will bring crit­i­cal aware­ness and earned med­ical care and dis­abil­i­ty ben­e­fits for those of us who were ex­posed to burn pits and oth­er tox­ins on the bat­tle­field.

I de­ployed in 2007 and then again in 2009 to Iraq. Dur­ing my first de­ploy­ment I was ex­posed dai­ly to burn pits, where I wit­nessed with my eyes med­ical waste, ve­hi­cle parts, trash, fe­ces, etc. be­ing burned with­in shout­ing dis­tance of tents used by our military to sleep. I drove into these burn pits al­most every day to de­liv­er our trash that was added to the pile. Tox­ins that our vet­er­ans have been and con­tin­ue to be ex­posed to are linked to var­i­ous med­ical ill­ness­es and can car­ry a life­time of prob­lems.

I, per­son­al­ly, have var­i­ous phys­i­cal im­pair­ments that are at least sus­pect­ed of potentially be­ing ag­gra­vat­ed by ex­po­sure to burn pits, if not cre­at­ed by the ex­po­sure itself. This legislation will make a big difference — it’s common sense and earned bipartisan support already. But Ted Budd, ap­par­ent­ly, couldn’t be both­ered to act with bipartisanship and commonsense to hon­or our na­tion’s vet­er­ans in a sim­ple way. How hard is it to vote “yea” on some­thing so crit­i­cal and sup­port­ive for our na­tion’s vet­er­ans?

For Ted Budd, it seems im­pos­si­ble. Ted Budd is not fit to rep­re­sent the state of North Car­oli­na in the Sen­ate or any oth­er elect­ed of­fice for that mat­ter. That is why I will be cast­ing my vote for Cheri Beasley, who will hon­or our na­tion’s vet­er­ans.

Thank you,

Bill Croc­ker

OIF, 2007 & 2009 veteran