They named the bill for a dead reservist. Then they pulled it off the floor. Twice.
If you draw VA disability compensation for tinnitus, sleep apnea, or any other service-connected condition, the bill the House pulled off the floor Thursday is about you. H.R. 9237, the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, went back on the shelf for the second time in less than a month. First pull was late June, when the coalition of veterans groups fighting the offset would not shut up. This one is snarled in the SAVE America Act fight. Trump-aligned holdouts are using the veterans package as leverage on unrelated voting legislation.
Sixty-plus veterans bills sit inside that package. Sixty-plus. Two of them most vets never thought would move. The Major Richard Star Act, which finally lets combat-injured retirees with fewer than twenty years of service draw both their DoD retirement pay and their VA disability without an offset. The Love Lives On Act, which restores benefits to surviving spouses who remarry. Both bills have been idling in committee for years because nobody could figure out how to pay for them. House Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mike Bost, R-Illinois, thought he had.
Here is how he thought he had.
VETERANS PAYING VETERANS
The pay-for is a change to the VA rating schedule for tinnitus and obstructive sleep apnea. The Congressional Budget Office says that change would reduce future monthly disability compensation for roughly one million veterans. Tinnitus is the single most common service-connected disability the VA rates. Around 3.6 million veterans currently receive compensation for it. Sleep apnea sits near the top of the list too. Both conditions are strongly associated with combat exposure, blast injury, and toxic exposure downrange.
The scored savings run to fifty-seven billion dollars over ten years. That is the money Bost wanted to hand back to combat-injured retirees, to surviving spouses, to caregivers.
You see the problem.
The Veterans of Foreign Wars saw it. National Commander Carol Whitmore called it what it is: asking future disabled veterans to bear the cost of expanding benefits for other disabled veterans. Disabled American Veterans saw it. So did Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and Swords to Plowshares. IAVA CEO Kyleanne Hunter said the quiet part loud. “Today it’s tinnitus and sleep apnea. Tomorrow it could be PTSD, migraines, toxic exposure conditions, or any other disability that becomes a tempting budget target.”
That is the door this bill kicks open. Once Congress writes a specific rating cut into federal statute, every rating becomes negotiable next time the budget scorekeepers get nervous.
THE SPLIT INSIDE THE VETERANS COMMUNITY
Not every group opposes it. The American Legion supports pushing the bill through. So does TAPS, the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors. Their argument is grim and honest. The VA is already moving under its own regulatory authority to reduce those tinnitus and sleep apnea ratings, under a 2022 proposed rule that has never been withdrawn. If the department rewrites the schedule administratively, the savings go straight to the Treasury and no veteran sees a dollar of it. If Congress moves first, at least the money pays for combat-injured retirees and surviving spouses. Christopher Lyle at the American Legion has called the package the biggest veterans legislation in a generation.
Both camps are right about the facts. That is what makes this so ugly.
Major Richard Star is dead. He was an Army reservist who came home from the burn pits with lung cancer, forced into early retirement while the bill Congress would eventually name for him sat in committee. It was introduced. It stalled. It was reintroduced. It stalled again. He died. His brother David is the one carrying it forward now. Last month David endorsed the underlying package. Then David publicly asked Bost to change the offset anyway. He does not think it passes the Senate as written.
He is probably right.
WHAT THE DEMOCRATS ARE ACTUALLY SAYING
Ranking Member Mark Takano did not hedge. “This bill asks veterans themselves to pay the price for expanding benefits to others,” he said, “a betrayal of the promise made when they raised their right hand. Cutting benefits for 1.5 million disabled veterans to fund other priorities would represent the largest betrayal of veterans in a single legislative act in modern history.” Takano has told his caucus he will fight any version of the bill that keeps the tinnitus and sleep apnea offset in it.
Representative Pat Ryan, D-New York, an Iraq War combat veteran and West Point grad, called the package “the worst kind of betrayal” this week, standing with Hudson Valley veterans and the twenty-plus VSOs opposing it. Ryan and the House Democratic veterans have been running the same play for weeks. Every VSO letter, every press conference, every floor speech names the offset by name.
On the Senate side, Richard Blumenthal led forty-six other senators in a letter to the VA opposing both the underlying rule change and the codification of that change inside TCAVA. The number that jumps out of their letter is the same one CBO gave. Nearly one million veterans would see monthly disability compensation reduced. Tinnitus alone reaches 3.6 million recipients.
That is Democratic opposition with receipts. It is also not the whole Democratic position. Democrats want the good bills inside TCAVA to pass. Almost every one of them will vote for the Major Richard Star Act as a standalone tomorrow if you put it in front of them. What they will not do is trade one group of disabled veterans for another to get there.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
Three things worth watching.
First, the VA’s own 2022 proposed rule on sleep apnea and tinnitus is still on the books, unresolved. If TCAVA fails and the VA finalizes the rule administratively, the cuts happen anyway and no veteran gets anything for it. Bost is not wrong about that pressure. Neither are the VSOs asking him to fix the offset instead of using it as the pay-for.
Second, the SAVE America Act fight is going to keep hostage-taking the veterans package until leadership settles it. Trump-aligned holdouts want the voting bill first. Concerned Veterans for America and Bost want the veterans bill first. Nobody is getting anything until that fight ends. Every day it drags out, the burn-pit veterans, the combat-injured retirees, and the surviving spouses this package would help sit and wait.
Third, and this is where every veteran drawing VA disability compensation should pay attention. If TCAVA moves in anything close to its current shape, Congress will have established the principle that specific disability ratings can be cut by statute whenever the budget needs an offset. That principle will not stop at tinnitus. It will not stop at sleep apnea. PTSD, TBI, musculoskeletal injuries, the toxic exposure conditions from Iraq, Afghanistan, and every burn pit downrange, all of those become budget targets the next time appropriators get squeezed.
If you draw VA disability compensation for any service-connected condition, this bill is about you. Not the version that hits you next week. The version that hits ten years from now, when a different Congress needs to find another fifty-seven billion for something else.
Watch what leadership does in the next two weeks. Then call your senator. Both of them. By name. And tell them what you drew your rating for.
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