Has the Major Richard Star Act Passed?

Yes, the House has passed it — and no, it is not law yet. The House of Representatives passed the Major Richard Star Act on Thursday, November 12, by 392 votes to 18, the House Clerk's Roll Call 323 shows. The bill now sits in the Senate, and nothing in any veteran's pay changes until the Senate passes it and the president signs it.

The plain reality underneath the headline is that the law today still works the old way. A veteran who was medically retired for combat injuries before completing 20 years of service still loses one dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar of VA disability compensation he receives, while a veteran who served the full 20 years keeps both payments in full. Thursday's vote did not end that offset. It moved the fix one chamber closer, and the gap between "passed" in a headline and money still being taken back is exactly why people keep asking whether this bill has really passed.

The bill's supporters say the vote finally ends what they call the wounded veterans tax. Rep. Raul Ruiz, who carried the bill with Rep. Gus Bilirakis, called it a historic victory and said the Senate must now act. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who leads the Senate version, warned that the rival veterans package the House passed a day earlier "will be defeated in the Senate," while Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas, the Republican chair of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, said he looks forward to that package becoming law, Military.com reported. The Senate now holds two House-passed versions of the same benefit, and it has not taken up either one.

The common-sense principle is plain. Retirement pay is earned by service, and disability compensation is paid for wounds — they are two different debts, owed for two different reasons. Paying one by cancelling the other means the veterans hurt worst, the ones forced out early by their injuries, are the only ones made to hand part of it back. And a fix that passes one chamber is a promise repeated, not a promise kept.

So the consequence now sits entirely with the Senate. Republican senators have blocked the standalone bill again and again by objection, and the Senate has no discharge-petition route to force a vote the way the House does. If the Senate lets both versions sit, they die when this Congress ends on January 3 and a six-year fight starts over from nothing. That is the question that follows from Thursday's vote: will senators now settle it on the record, or let the bill die quietly the way it has died before?

The details that decide what this means in money are these. The Congressional Budget Office estimated on October 27 that about 58,000 combat-injured, medically retired veterans would be affected — the House Veterans' Affairs Committee puts the figure at roughly 59,000 — and that their combined pay would rise by an average of about $1,450 a month if the bill becomes law. The offset those veterans live under now averages about $2,275 a month, and the bill's ten-year cost is projected at $12.75 billion. Thursday's vote was 210 Democrats, 181 Republicans and one independent in favour, with all 18 no votes coming from Republicans. The bill only reached the floor because a discharge petition forced it there — 218 members signed, with Rep. Nancy Mace providing the 218th signature on September 15. On Wednesday the House also passed, by voice vote, the Take Care of America's Veterans Act, which carries its own version of the Star Act alongside more than 60 other provisions and changes to how tinnitus and sleep apnea are rated for future claims; that trade-off is the main fault line between the two versions now in the Senate. The Senate companion bill, S. 1032, has some 80 cosponsors and still awaits action. If a bill is signed in December, the change takes effect on the first day of the following month, so it would reach January payments. We set out what the Act itself does in What Is the Major Richard Star Act?, and our report of Thursday's vote is here.

"Six years ago, Major Star asked Congress to fix this. He died before we could." — Rep. Mark Takano