Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max JOE BIDEN traveled to Fort Worth, Texas today to talk to veteran health care providers about the health effects of soldiers exposed to “burn pits”— places where the U.S. military burned large amounts of waste and exposed soldiers to toxic fumes. It’s the second time this month that he’s focused on the topic. In his State of the Union address, Biden invited the widow of a soldier who died of lung cancer after exposure to burn pits while serving in Iraq. The White House has presented this veterans-focused advocacy as part of Biden’s “unity agenda”—a way to demonstrate the president’s commitment to forging bipartisan consensus in partisan times. But Biden’s recent focus on burn pits is also inextricably connected to his son, BEAU BIDEN , who died of brain cancer in 2015 at just 46-years-old. In his public remarks, Biden usually notes his uncertainty about the relation between burn pits and Beau’s death. As he put it in the State of the Union speech, “I don’t know for sure if the burn pit that he lived near — that his hooch was near in Iraq and, earlier than that, in Kosovo is the cause of his brain cancer and the disease of so many other troops.” But Biden occasionally lets slip what he says privately: that he believes burn pit exposure was the cause. “And because of exposure to burn pits — in my view, I can’t prove it yet — he came back with Stage 4 glioblastoma,” he said on the campaign trail in October 2019. That conviction is now at the center of a legislative battle worth potentially hundreds of billions of dollars. Last week, the House passed — with 34 Republicans joining Democrats — a bill that expands the health problems that the Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) covers for veterans’ care and adds retroactive payments for care they did not receive. The legislation includes glioblastoma, the cancer that killed Beau. From 2007 to 2020, the VA denied 78 percent of veteran disability claims from toxic exposure from burn pits. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the cost of the bill would be $300 billion over the next decade. The Senate has passed a much more narrow bill that will be at the center of negotiations between the chambers, should the legislation get that far. Two advocates of veterans exposed to burn pits, comedian JON STEWART and 9/11 victims’ activist JOHN FEAL, are meeting with Senate Majority Leader CHUCK SCHUMER on Thursday, according to the group Burn Pits 360, which has been a key player on the issue. Schumer’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Biden first became passionate about the issue when he was still vice president after reading the book “The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers” by JOSEPH HICKMAN, a former Marine and author who has dubbed burn pits the “agent orange of the twenty-first century.” “I was stunned when I read it. It was a lot of hype–it was advertised and it was selling. And there was a whole chapter on my son Beau in there. It stunned me,” Biden told PBS’ JUDY WOODRUFF in January 2018. Biden himself did not participate in the book and Hickman says he hasn’t spoken to him about it. A veteran and a self-described “libertarian to the core,” Hickman described the president as “ the first one to ever take this issue seriously. I mean, Trump didn't know what the hell it was, you know?” The book itself noted that Beau Biden’s “months of deployment at Camp Victory and Joint Base Balad” in Iraq, involved cases where his unit “had multiple burn pits that operate round-the-clock, with no environmental restrictions.” Biden’s beliefs have led him to declare that “more people are coming home from Iraq with brain cancer” than “any other war.” It’s a claim that has been questioned by fact-checkers. Indeed, the difficulty of proving direct ties between burn pit exposure and cancer is the main reason why veterans have been fighting with the VA for over a decade. But Biden’s personal stake in the issue could result in the first real legislative action. Advocates remain cautiously optimistic that the president’s State of the Union remarks are more than just election year rhetoric. ROSIE TORRES, the co-founder of Burn Pits 360, told us: “We're still skeptical, but hopeful that he's going to really take the loss of his son and really honor him and all of the other Beau Biden's out there that also succumbed to the issue of toxic exposure.” DANIELLE ROBINSON, Biden’s guest at the State of the Union speech, whose late husband was stationed at the same bases as Beau, told West Wing Playbook that after the speech she met the president. “He had some tears in his eyes and he just gave me a big hug and said that we have to keep going and keep fighting for them,” she recalled. She added that Biden’s sister, VALERIE , told her that “Beau’s death was very, very difficult for the whole family and that President Biden always questioned the burn pit relationship.” TEXT US — Are you MARK BRZEZINSKI, U.S. ambassador to Poland? We want to hear from you (we’ll keep you anonymous). Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. 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