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When Senator Harkin was retiring,
and I was in the House and running for

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the Senate, he called me over and he said,
"Tammy, I'm handing the reins over to you."

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(laughing)

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♪ (music) ♪

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It has just sort of fallen to me to

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champion ADA issues, being a wheelchair user.

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And then, Senator Harkin was retiring
and I was in the House

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and running for the Senate,
he called me over

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and he said,
"Tammy, I'm handing the reins over to you."

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(laughter) "I'm handing the torch to you.
You need to be the torch bearer

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and you need to really represent
the entire disability community

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because you, frankly, would't be here
had the disability community

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not been there
before you even became disabled."

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And he was absolutely right.

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I find myself being the go-to person
on a lot of the ADA issues

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as they come up in Congress.

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♪ (music) ♪

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I said, yes, I was honored.

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I mean, to be able to be handed
the mantle from

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Tome Harkin is quite the honor.

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And you know,
I don't know that I can fill his shoes,

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but I try everyday to make sure
I do my best to represent the community,

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but also to just fight for basic common--

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and this is what I did in the Army,
I fought for freedoms,

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I fought for people's rights.
And this is just a basic human right,

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to be able to access the life
that you want to access,

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and live the life that you want to live

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and to be not be confronted by barriers
at every turn.

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♪ (music) ♪

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I have been working on burn pit issues
for a very long time, and it started

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from just my own experience
being exposed to the burn pits in Iraq.

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We used to fly into Baghdad.

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(cough)

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We were stationed in Balad
and we would fly into Baghdad

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into the the Green Zone.

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And if you were on the ground
looking up, it always, just the sky,

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always just looked a little overcast.
It didn't look anything, you know,

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ominous, but flying through about a
50 foot, 100 foot layer of basically

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brown skies, in the sky.

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We used to burn the air crew's lungs
and you would go through there like,

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Oh man, my eyes are watering,
my lungs are burning, and I always said

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there was gonna be
some respiratory illnesses.

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And then I started working on
Agent Orange issues within the VA,

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and it was under President Obama
and Secretary Shinseki

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that we finally

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granted benefits to veterans
based on presumptive benefits.

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So, if you develop (inudible) heart
disease, if you develop leukemia B,

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and you were in Vietnam,
we're going to presume that it's

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because of your Vietnam service.

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We no longer force veterans to,
you know, prove that their illness

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was caused by Agent Orange,
which is presumed.

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And then, so that really started me
working on burn pits

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after we were successful
with the Agent Orange campaign.

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And so it's pretty much been
continuous ever since, and I'm really glad

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we got the contract passed.

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There's more work to do,
but it's a great, great, great, great,

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first start.

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♪ (music) ♪