WASHINGTON -- U.S. Sen. Richard Burr quietly blocked a massive defense authorization bill this week, pledging to hold up hundreds of pages of directives on the nation's military plans until Pentagon leaders backtracked on a 38-word clause in the bill that Burr feared would hurt victims of water contamination at Camp Lejeune.
It worked.
Burr's behind-the-scenes maneuver, buoyed by action from U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, illustrates how lawmakers often move in order to get results in Washington: Elected representatives negotiate with one another behind closed doors, feeling pressured by federal agencies and constituents back home, often over just a few words of legislation.
The amendment that the North Carolina senators wanted to preserve would have prohibited the U.S. Department of the Navy from deciding on hundreds of administrative tort claims from former Lejeune residents who think they were harmed by drinking water poisoned with a variety of chemicals over a 30-year period.
Burr, a Winston-Salem Republican, and Hagan, a Greensboro Democrat, wrote the original amendment, buried inside the 924-page National Defense Authorization Act of 2011.
The sweeping bill establishes the Pentagon's to-do list and is one of the most significant that the Congress approves each year.
But late last week the senators learned that a conference of House and Senate Armed Services staffers had slipped in language altering their amendment.
The senators and other advocates wanted no decisions made until federal scientists finished a host of studies that many think will connect the contamination to a variety of cancers and other illnesses. They feared quick adjudications would allow the Navy to make decisions that wouldn't fully compensate victims.
"Once the Navy denies a claim, they adjudicate your claim and they say it's a denial, you've got six months ... to file a suit in federal court. Six months," said Jerry Ensminger of White Lake, a Marine veteran whose daughter died of leukemia in 1985 at the age of 9.
But last week, when the defense bill went to final negotiations between staffers from the House and Senate Armed Services committees, the wording was changed. Words were added allowing the military to act on the claims with "a 45-day notice" from the Pentagon.
That small change would have allowed the military to go ahead and adjudicate claims - as long as the Navy told the Armed Services committees it was going to do that.
Burr and Hagan learned about the alteration Friday, after their staff members got a call from staffers in the office of U.S. Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who has been active in the Lejeune case.
"It was absolutely, totally unacceptable," Hagan said of the change. "This was my language that I put in the bill. How could it be altered without me being told about it and weighing in on it?"
She confronted U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, during a luncheon Friday, and again Saturday during a vote on the Senate floor.
Burr, meanwhile, indicated to the Republican Senate cloakroom that he wouldn't let the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 go through for a floor vote, a procedural tactic meant to block its movement.
Hagan said she stopped short of a hold because she thought the larger defense bill needed to be approved while North Carolina troops were at war abroad.
Letter: Delay judgment
By Friday, the House of Representatives had approved the bill. It was too late to change it, so Levin agreed to put language in a nonbinding "report" that said the Armed Services committees wanted the Navy to hold off on finalizing adjudication of claims. But Burr wanted a further commitment from the military and continued blocking the defense bill until Tuesday.
So by midday Tuesday, Levin had a letter from acting Secretary of the Navy Robert O. Work. (Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus was out of the country.)
The letter pledged to hold off on making decisions about the claims until the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry completes several scientific studies about the water contamination.
Work wrote that if the defense authorization bill is enacted, "accompanied by language expressing the expectation of the two Armed Services Committees that no administrative claims associated with water contamination on Camp Lejeune will be fully and finally adjudicated during fiscal year 2011 until after studies of possible health effects have been completed, it would be our intention to comply with that direction."
"I trust this response will enable the Committee to continue working toward the passage of the fiscal year 2011 defense authorization bill," Work wrote.
Hagan and Burr were satisfied, and the full Senate approved the defense authorization bill Wednesday morning.
Staff versus Navy
The drama this week caps a year of arguments between congressional staff and the military about how the Navy has handled its response to scientific studies about the contamination. The Camp Lejeune water was poisoned with trichloroethylene, tetrachloroethylene, benzene and vinyl chloride until wells were closed in the mid-1980s.
Last winter, Burr held up two top Navy nominees until the Navy agreed to pay for a $1.5-million scientific study.
Both he and Hagan co-sponsored an amendment requiring the Navy to fork over to scientists a list of all the hundreds of documents it possesses regarding the contamination.
This fall, at Hagan's urging, Christopher Portier director of the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, told the military that there was "undoubtedly a hazard" in drinking the contaminated water.
This week, after publicity and congressional inquiries, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs began training a specialized group of workers in Louisville, Ky., to handle disability claims from Marine veterans with diseases that they think are linked to the water.
