Veterans package stalls after House’s swift departure
By OLIVIA DIAZ
When House Republican leaders last week called off their final day of voting before the midterm elections and sent members home, they left behind a multibillion-dollar veterans benefits package they had once hoped would be a popular win to campaign on.
The sweeping bill, the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, would devote critical resources to veterans benefits and programs — the kind of measure that lawmakers typically relish taking back to their districts to promote in their bids for reelection.
Instead, the legislation is stalled and on the brink of collapse, mired in a funding dispute that has divided the two parties, splintered Republicans and driven a bitter wedge between powerful veterans groups that normally band together when benefits are at stake.
The impasse grew so intense that last Tuesday, Democrats won enough support from Republicans to go around House leadership and force action on a piece of the bill — a long-shot maneuver to salvage a measure that supporters worry is now doomed anyway.
The centerpiece of the bill is a provision that would allow service members who retired from the military because of a combat-related disability to receive their full retirement pay, rather than having it reduced dollar for dollar by their disability benefits, as current law requires. It is known as the Maj. Richard Star Act, named for a combat-injured Army veteran who advocated the policy change after he was forced to medically retire because of cancer that he developed from toxic exposure during deployments to the Middle East.
Republicans demanded that the cost of such a change — an estimated $9.4 billion over a decade — be covered by cuts elsewhere, and settled on paring back disability compensation for future veterans with sleep apnea and tinnitus. But Democrats resisted the trade-off and dropped their support for the entire package, which also would include funding for dozens of other veterans programs, from suicide prevention to lactation rooms at VA hospitals. So did some Republicans, who blasted an approach that they said pitted veterans against one another.
“It is wrong and unseemly to take benefits away from a certain number of vets for a different group of vets,” said Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J. “And I’ll tell you what: The veterans don’t like it.”
The proposed cuts, which lawmakers have estimated would save as much as $57 billion over a decade, created deep rifts in the veteran community. The American Legion and some other veterans groups urged Congress to back the package, in the interest of enacting the long-stalled Richard Star measure. But two other major veterans advocacy organizations — Disabled American Veterans and Veterans of Foreign Wars — said they could not support a bill that would slash tinnitus and sleep apnea benefits and have lobbied lawmakers to fix the bill or drop their support.
“I would love to see my full retirement pay, but I would feel terrible,” said Naomi Mathis, a deputy legislative director at DAV who served in the Air Force before medically retiring in 2007. “I couldn’t even lay my head on the pillow and say that this is OK.”
The fierce divide among veterans and lawmakers came to a head in July, when House leaders tried to bring up the veterans package but were forced to pull it from the floor when it became clear they did not have the votes to pass it.
“Thank you, VFW, for screwing over current and future veterans and their spouses!” Rep. Daniel Crenshaw, R-Texas, a Navy SEAL veteran, wrote on social media at the time.
Other Republicans who opposed the cuts took matters into their own hands by going around House Speaker Mike Johnson and signing on to an effort by Democrats to force a version of the Richard Star Act to the floor on its own.
Last Tuesday, that effort — a so-called discharge petition that can fast-track legislation to a floor vote if a majority of House members demand it — got the 218 signatures it needed to succeed. Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina provided the final signature, becoming the fifth Republican to do so.
“Washington has no business nickel-and-diming veterans who were willing to put their lives on the line for ours,” Mace said in a statement, adding, “Combat-injured veterans have waited long enough.”
Johnson abruptly scrapped the House’s final day of voting last week after Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., introduced impeachment articles against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that would have required a vote by Thursday had the House remained in session.
Action on the Richard Star measure will not happen until after Congress returns following the midterm elections to what could be a radically different political landscape, leaving the fate of the entire package deeply uncertain.
That has left proponents of the broader bill embittered.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., an Air Force veteran, said he was frustrated that the package had been stymied, suggesting that sleep apnea and tinnitus benefits had been manipulated by some of those who served. After retiring from the military, he said he remembered fellow veterans encouraging him to apply for relief for those conditions even though he did not experience them.
“The whole thing bothered me,” Bacon said. “I know that not everybody falls into that category, but there was surely some exploitation of these rules.”
The earliest House members could vote on any veterans bill would be upon their return Nov. 9, two days before Veterans Day.
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