The House of Representatives voted 392 to 18 on Thursday to pass the Major Richard Star Act, ending the rule that forces combat-injured veterans who were medically retired before finishing 20 years of service to give up a dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar of VA disability compensation they receive. The vote was final passage of the bill (H.R. 2102), and it now goes to the Senate.
The support crossed party lines almost completely. Democrats voted 210 to 0 in favour, Republicans voted 181 to 18, and the House's one independent voted yes. All 18 votes against the bill came from Republicans, and 23 members did not vote, the House Clerk's roll call shows.
Under the law as it stands, a service member wounded in combat and medically retired under Chapter 61 of the military retirement system, short of the 20-year mark, cannot collect both benefits in full: the retirement pay is reduced by the amount of the VA disability compensation. Retirees who completed 20 years already receive both in full. The Star Act removes the offset for combat-disabled Chapter 61 retirees, so they would receive the full amount of the retirement pay they earned and the full disability compensation owed for their wounds.
Roughly 59,000 medically retired, combat-injured veterans are caught by the offset today. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that ending it, in the form the House passed, would raise federal spending by about $13 billion over the 2027 to 2036 period, money that flows directly to those veterans and their households.
The bill is named for Major Richard Star, a U.S. Army Reserve soldier who pressed Congress to fix the offset while he was himself battling cancer. He died on February 13, 2021, at age 51, before it could pass. Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida first introduced the bill in 2020, and he and Rep. Raul Ruiz of California have reintroduced it in every Congress since. It reached the floor this week only after a discharge petition led by Rep. Mark Takano of California gathered the 218 signatures needed to force a vote; Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina provided the 218th signature in September.
"Six years ago, Major Star asked Congress to fix this. He died before we could," Takano said after the vote. Ruiz, who carried the bill alongside Bilirakis, said combat-injured veterans would finally "receive both the retirement pay and the disability compensation they earned," and added: "Now the Senate must act."
The bill carries the backing of the country's major veterans organizations, among them the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion and the Wounded Warrior Project, which stayed in the fight across six years of Congresses that let it wait.
For the families affected, this is household money. A wounded veteran's full pension and full disability check arriving together means the rent or mortgage covered, groceries and fuel paid for, and debts run up during years of shorted pay finally coming down, in the towns where these families actually live. It also removes a penalty that fell hardest on those whose service ended earliest precisely because combat ended it: the country asked for their working years and their health, and then subtracted one earned benefit from the other.
The bill now goes to the Senate, where a companion measure (S. 1032), led by Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and backed by about 80 cosponsors, still awaits action. If the Senate passes it and the President signs it, the change takes effect on the first day of the first month after it becomes law. Until then nothing has changed yet: no payment has risen and no offset has moved.
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