Earlier this month, House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jerry Moran unveiled one of the most significant veterans’ legislative packages Congress has considered in years. The newly introduced Take Care of America’s Veterans Act combines more than 60 bipartisan reforms into a single package designed to improve the lives of veterans and their families while finally providing a path forward for the long-awaited Major Richard Star Act.
The legislation represents months of bipartisan negotiations and reflects a simple principle: if America asks its citizens to serve, it should keep its promises when they come home.
Much of the attention has understandably focused on the Major Richard Star Act. For years, Congress has promised to correct one of the most glaring injustices facing combat-injured veterans. Under current law, service members who are medically retired because of combat-related injuries before reaching 20 years of service are forced to forfeit a portion of their earned military retirement pay in order to receive VA disability compensation.
These are not veterans who voluntarily left military service. They are men and women whose careers were cut short by wounds suffered in combat—injuries sustained from improvised explosive devices, rocket attacks, small-arms fire, and other battlefield hazards. For approximately 59,000 combat-injured veterans and their families, the Major Richard Star Act would finally end what many rightly view as a wounded warrior tax.
But the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act is about far more than a single provision.
The package contains a broad range of reforms designed to modernize veterans’ services and address some of the most pressing challenges facing the veteran community. It expands access to mental health care and substance abuse treatment programs. It strengthens suicide prevention efforts and outreach to vulnerable veterans. It improves caregiver support for families who shoulder the daily burdens of caring for wounded veterans. It modernizes benefits delivery systems and technology infrastructure to make services more efficient and accessible.
The legislation also seeks to expand economic opportunities for veterans by improving employment and transition programs, enhancing educational and training opportunities, and reducing bureaucratic barriers that too often stand between veterans and the benefits they have earned. It includes measures to improve accountability and responsiveness throughout the Department of Veterans Affairs while helping ensure veterans receive timely care and assistance.
Taken together, these reforms represent one of the most comprehensive veterans packages Congress has assembled in recent memory.
Yet despite broad bipartisan support, a familiar obstacle remains: how to pay for it.
Supporters have long argued that veterans’ benefits should not require offsets. Senator Richard Blumenthal has made a compelling moral case that “the cost of war should include the cost of caring for our veterans.” There is substantial truth in that argument. When America commits troops to combat, the obligation to care for those who return wounded should not be treated as optional.
At the same time, Congress operates within budget rules and fiscal constraints whether one agrees with them or not. With the national debt approaching $40 trillion and growing concern over federal spending, lawmakers are increasingly focused on identifying offsets for new expenditures. Ignoring that reality has not helped move legislation across the finish line.
The Major Richard Star Act now has nearly six years of legislative history, overwhelming bipartisan support, endorsements from virtually every major veterans service organization, and support from more than three-quarters of the United States Senate. If concerns about offsets remain the principal obstacle, then Congress should focus on finding a responsible solution rather than allowing the issue to become a perpetual excuse for delay.
The answer is not to pit one group of veterans against another or finance today’s reforms by creating tomorrow’s veterans’ injustice. Congress should instead look where taxpayers expect it to look: waste, duplication, unobligated balances, improper payments, outdated programs, and lower-priority expenditures throughout the federal government.
Reasonable offsets are not a betrayal of veterans. They are often the practical means by which bipartisan legislation becomes law.
The real question is whether Congress has the political will to finish the job.
The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act presents a rare opportunity. It would improve mental health services, strengthen caregiver support, expand economic opportunities, modernize benefits delivery, and finally correct a longstanding injustice against combat-injured veterans through the Major Richard Star Act.
Lawmakers can continue debating budget procedures while another generation of wounded warriors waits. Or they can do what leaders are supposed to do: build consensus, identify responsible offsets where necessary, pass this bipartisan package, and finally deliver on promises that veterans have heard for far too long.
America’s veterans fulfilled their obligations to this nation. Congress should now fulfill its obligation to them.
William J. Black, III, is a Georgia attorney and a combat-disabled veteran of the U.S. Air Force.
