Congress recently reached a deal assuaging an economic downturn while making progress towards correcting injustices faced by America’s combat-wounded. Bipartisan efforts, particularly from Georgia, have been evident in addressing veterans’ issues this year, including the Major Richard Star Act (MRSA) introduced by Montana Senator Jon Tester and Florida Representative Gus Bilirakis. This legislation aims to rectify an injustice affecting over 50,000 combat-disabled veterans nationwide, including nearly 2,400 in Georgia based on a 2021 Department of Defense (DoD) report, because under the proposed measure they would receive both DoD retirement and Veterans Affairs (VA) disability compensation concurrently. The current law, however, limits compensation for military retirees forced to retire due to combat disabilities, but the MRSA seeks to expand concurrent receipt. Major Star, who advocated for this change, unfortunately passed away in February 2021.
Currently, retirees need a minimum of 20 years of service and a VA disability rating of at least 50% to be eligible for full concurrent pay. However, combat-disabled veterans with less than 20 years of service their DoD compensation is offset dollar for dollar, penalizing over 50,000 veterans by docking their pay. Seen solely as a cost cutting measure, reducing the retirement pay of a combat-disabled veteran — in effect, using it to pay their VA disability benefit — sounds just as incredibly unjust now as it did years ago.
Last year, 336 House and 67 Senate members co-sponsored the legislation, but, regrettably, the law was not included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). The MRSA, reintroduced this year, has gained significant support with 320 House members and 65 Senators signing on. Efforts are underway to include the bill in this year’s NDAA, and Rep. Bilirakis submitted a motion to set it on the consensus calendar recently so it could head to the House floor for a vote soon. Although both Georgia Senators Warnock and Ossoff cosponsored the MRSA, several Georgia representatives (Ferguson, Clyde, Collins, McCormick, Allen, Loudermilk, and Scott, A. to be precise) have yet to cosponsor it alongside their colleagues who did.
In response to an inquiry about this year’s legislation, Senator Warnock, the son of a U.S. Army veteran, stated “Georgia is home to hundreds of thousands of our nation’s veterans… [and he’s] committed to ensuring that every veteran has access to the care and benefits [they’ve] earned…[since] veterans wounded in the line of duty [that] have combat-related disabilities…this makes achieving economic success difficult and increases their likelihood to experience homelessness.”
Unexpectedly, Representatives McCormick, Clyde, Collins, and Williams, voted against the debt deal raising concerns about their commitment to veterans’ economic security. Among them only Representative Williams supported the MRSA. Representative McCormick’s proposed “Wounded Warrior Bill of Rights,” which he sponsored recently instead, introduces additional bureaucracy, not efficiency, into a problematic system to evaluate combat disabilities. This law, at first glance, wouldn’t appear to “streamline” anything since it adds a decision authority for military commanders to the civilian oversight of the appellate decision process within the integrated disability evaluation system (IDES). As a combat-disabled retiree who went through IDES, I suspect this “bill of rights” might perpetuate bureaucracy and unfairness to individual wounded warriors going through that process because it’s adding another problematic layer onto an existing one.
Meanwhile Greene’s cosponsoring the MRSA with colleagues on both sides of the aisle offers yet another voice of unexpected reason for effective bipartisanship with veterans issues since she also helped seal the debt deal which also expanded veterans healthcare.
Combat wounded veterans shouldn’t be shortchanged by unfair rules that cancel out an earned benefit for a more cost-effective one simply because existing forces push them aside for being injured in a war. America’s combat-wounded warriors, me included, have earned their benefits through extraordinary sacrifices, regardless of any length of service. It is imperative for representatives to prioritize passing the MRSA by providing America’s wounded veterans with the economic security they deserve.
William J. Black, III, is a Georgia lawyer, author, and combat-disabled veteran of the U.S. Air Force and he was a 2021 U.S. Department of Defense Warrior Games Athlete for Team Air Force.
