What Is the Major Richard Star Act?
The Major Richard Star Act is a bill in Congress — H.R. 2102 in the House and S. 1032 in the Senate — that would let combat-injured veterans who were medically retired before reaching 20 years of service receive both of their payments in full: their complete military retired pay and their complete VA disability compensation. Today, those veterans have their retired pay reduced dollar for dollar by the amount of VA compensation they receive — a reduction advocates call the "wounded veteran tax." The act would end that offset for an estimated 54,000 to 60,000 combat-injured retirees. It is not law yet. On Veterans Day, November 11, the House passed the larger veterans package that contains it, the Take Care of America's Veterans Act, and in a separate 245–175 vote approved a motion to bring the standalone Star Act toward a floor vote — but further proceedings were postponed, and the Senate has still not passed it in any form.
The plain reality is written into the two payments themselves. Retired pay is earned by years of service. Disability compensation is owed because of an injury. They are answers to two different things — yet a service member whose combat injuries forced him out before 20 years watches one payment eat the other, precisely because he was retired early by the wounds themselves. A veteran who completes 20 years with a disability rating of 50 percent or more can generally collect both in full. The one carried off the battlefield sooner cannot.
What its supporters in Congress claim is that this finally keeps a promise. House Veterans' Affairs Chairman Mike Bost, announcing the Veterans Day package, said it "finally delivers the Maj. Richard Star Act to over 60,000 combat-wounded, medically retired disabled veterans." Rep. Tom Barrett called it "the long-overdue Major Richard Star Act that provides veterans injured in combat with full retirement pay."
"They were injured in combat. Congress still takes back their retirement pay."
The common-sense principle is that pay earned by service and compensation owed for an injury are not the same money handed over twice. One settles what a career was worth; the other settles what the career cost the person who lived it. Treating the second as a reason to claw back the first means the most seriously wounded retirees — the ones who could not stay to reach 20 years — are the only ones made to pay for their own injuries.
The consequence of the long blockage is a bill with majority support that still has not become law. By the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Democrats' count it had been blocked eight times by June 2026, stopped by single-senator objections. Supporters forced the issue with a discharge petition that reached the required 218 House signatures on September 15, 2026 — Rep. Nancy Mace was the 218th signer — and Wednesday's discharge vote kept the standalone route alive alongside the package. But the clock is now the opponent: if this Congress ends on January 3, 2027 without the act passed and signed, it dies and must start again. Will a bill almost everyone says they support outrun the calendar?
The details that matter to the question are these. The act is named for Maj. Richard Star, an Army combat engineer who cleared routes and roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, was medically retired short of 20 years with stage 4 lung cancer linked to burn-pit exposure, and spent his final months before his death on February 13, 2021 asking Congress to end the offset. It covers Chapter 61 disability retirees with fewer than 20 years of service whose disabilities are combat-related — a term that reaches armed conflict, hazardous duty, conditions simulating war and instrumentalities of war, and can include burn-pit-linked illness. If it becomes law, the change starts the first month after enactment; it is not retroactive and pays no back pay. His widow Tonya Star, who carried the fight on until her own death in August 2024, gave the act its simplest verdict in an interview with Wounded Warrior Project: "This would be their win."