Nov. 11 (UPI) — In his final time as the nation’s 46th commander-in-chief, President Joe Biden on Monday addressed a Veterans Day crowd at the national cemetery in Virginia, where he revealed newly expanded veteran benefits and urged Americans to “come together” and “keep faith in each other.”
At Arlington National Cemetery for the Veterans Day Ceremony, Biden first attended a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff.
“This is the moment to come together as a nation to keep faith in each other,” Biden said at the cemetery’s marbled amphitheater near the end of his remarks. “The world is dependent on each of you and all of us, all of you to keep honoring the women and the men and the families who have borne the battle to keep protecting everything they fought for.”
The outgoing Democratic president announced mid-speech an expansion of the PACT Act — his 2022 law expanding VA health care benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits, Agent Orange and other poisons during military service.
Biden said the federal VA will expand the number of type of cancers covered under the law “and to all veterans who served at [the K-2 air base] in Uzbekistan, constantly surrounded by toxins.”
“We want to have your back,” he said, adding the change will be so veterans “don’t have to prove your illness as a consequence of your service,” which he added “is often too hard to do.”
“God willing,” the president added, “we will make sure that any rare condition you’ve developed is covered.” The administration is “committed” to “getting this rule in place by the end of my term” on January 20, he said.
The White House said earlier it will move forward with new plans to expand benefits for toxic-exposed veterans, cut homelessness by helping veterans stay in their residents through various programs, along with plans to support student veterans.
The president told the crowd and assembled vets it has been “the greatest honor of my life to lead you, to serve you, to care for you, to defend you just as you defended us generation after generation after generation” in what he called “the greatest fighting force,” adding “this is not hyperbole, the finest fighting force in the history of the world.”
Biden said more than 160 years ago in what would be his last days in office, “President Abraham Lincoln addressed this nation and he said, let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds to care for him who shall have borne the battle.”
He urged Americans “to keep striving to heal our nation’s wounds” and to “keep perfecting our union.”
“We’re the only nation in the world built on an idea,” he said. “Every other nation is based on things like geography, ethnicity, religion, but we are the only nation, the only in the world built on an idea. And that idea is we’re all created equal deserved or created equal throughout our lives.”
But, he said, “we haven’t lived up to it every time, but we’ve never walked away from it even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard. And today standing together to honor those Americans who have dared all, risked all and given all to our nation, I must say clearly, we never will give up.
He will never, Biden said, “visiting bases in Korea where America’s sons and daughters answers the call to defend the people they had never met for paying my respects in Hanoi for so many of our troops defended democracy, including my friend Senator John McCain.”
He briefly spoke on the deadly U.S. withdrawl out of Afghanistan.
“Four presidents faced a decision after we had gotten Bin Laden whether to end our longest war in history in Afghanistan,” he said. “I was determined not to leave it to the fifth,” he said alluding to now President-elect Donald Trump.
“Every day I still carry a card with me,” said Biden of a schedule he’s carried every single day for the last 10 years that lists on the back numbers of U.S. troops dead or wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He also touted success of his administration on behalf of military veterans. The Veteran Affairs Department has doled $187 billion in earned benefits to 6.7 million veterans and their survivors. And according to the White House, the Biden administration “delivered more benefits and health care, more quickly, to more veterans than ever before.”
According to the VA, it processed 2.51 million disability claims and took 131 million healthcare appointments and six million dental procedures. It also provided assistance to more than 88,000 family caregivers.
“We have many obligations but only one truly sacred obligation,” said Biden on Monday in Arlington. “Prepare those we send in harm’s way and to care for them and their families when they return home. And when they don’t.”
He briefly mentioned his late son, former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who previously deployed to Iraq for a year with the Delaware National Guard and later died in 2015 of cancer.
“Like so many of you we also remember how hard it was when he was deployed, empty seats at the dinner table, missed holidays and birthdays, prayers of hope and worry repeated every morning and every night,” said the president. “English poet, John Milton wrote and I quote, ‘they also serve who only stand and wait as so many of you have.'”
Biden also highlighted record-low numbers of veterans experiencing homelessness around the country, and touted the administration’s expansion of disability benefits eligibility and records for care and delivered benefits.
He called the PACT Act “the most significant law in our history. Our nation’s history,” which has aided more than 1 million veterans and their families “get the benefits they deserve, they deserve those benefits,” said Biden.
He added that his administration passed “more than 30 bipartisan laws to support our veterans and their families, caregivers and survivors. We brought veterans, homelessness down to a record low, delivered more benefits to more veterans than any ever before in VA history, we’ve invested record resources to reduce the scourge of veteran suicide.”
“It’s an obligation not based on party or politics but on a promise that unites us all,” the ex-Delaware Senator said, adding “we strive on to finish the work of our moment to bind the nation’s wounds once again, we commit recommit to the sacred vow.”