By Tom Philpott

Jerry Ensminger, a retired Marine Corps master sergeant who has fought for years to win government-funded health care for families exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejeune, N.C., doesn’t want the measure passed if, to pay for it, Congress would gut the military’s prized c

ommissary benefit.

Critics contend that’s what the Caring for Camp Lejeune Veterans Act (S. 277) would do, funding health care for these families by ending annual appropriations for commissaries and merging these base grocery store operations with exchanges, the name for base department stores.

“Do I agree with this proposal to punish veterans and their families and active duty people who depend on, and worked for, the right to use the commissary? Hell no. We have lost too many of our benefits over the years to have this taken from us,” Ensminger said in a phone interview.

But Ensminger, who lost a 9-year-old daughter, Janey, to acute lymphoblastic leukemia in 1985, and blames her death and many others on poisons found in Lejeune drinking water, had only praise for Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., lead architect of S. 277. In June, when forced to find cuts in defense spending to pay for Lejeune vets’ health care, Burr proposed streamlining military store operations. The full committee agreed.

Just by getting S. 277 through the veterans affairs committee this summer, Burr brought ailing Lejeune veterans and families closer to the medical help they need, Ensminger suggested. That alone is a victory.

“I applaud Senator Burr for recognizing this problem and raising it to the level it deserves. It is horrific that this happened” to families over three decades, ending in 1985. “So please focus on the fact that there’s no question the population at Camp Lejeune was poisoned,” Ensminger told me.

“Now, does the bill need to be amended and tweaked? Yes, by all means,” he said. “Does there need to be another way of paying for it? Yes, and there are other savings that can be found within the Department of Defense budget. But, that burden should not be placed on Sen. Burr or Sen. (Patty) Murray (D-Wash.) or the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee (which she chairs). It should be placed on the perpetrators who did this.”

That, Ensminger said, is the Department of Defense, and more specifically the Navy and the Marine Corps.

Burr’s decision to fund S. 277 by putting commissaries at risk has been roundly criticized by military associations, commissary patrons and the American Logistics Association, which represents suppliers doing business with base stores. The logistics association projects that, if passed as written, S. 277 would raise grocery prices an average of $4,000 a year for military families and kill 50,000 store jobs for family members.

Commissary advocates on Capitol Hill suggest the store system has had a target on its back for deficit hawks. The target only got bigger when the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee signaled that ending taxpayer subsidies and lowering patron savings were reasonable efficiency moves.

The offset to pay for S. 277, said David Ward, Burr’s spokesman, “is just one option for providing care for the veterans and their family members who suffer as a result of exposure to toxic water at Camp Lejeune.” Burr remains “open to working with DOD to find other means to pay for this important legislation.”

Burr might have done all he can at this point to help these families. If he were to request and get floor time in the Senate to debate and try to pass S. 277, the Senate Armed Services Committee stands ready to seek unanimous consent of colleagues to send the bill to its committee, which claims oversight of defense budgets and policies including base stores.

A Senate source acknowledged referral likely would kill the bill.

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