House Republicans passed a bill on Veterans Day that could cut veterans disability pay for up to 1.5 million people, using a voice vote that put no individual member’s name on the record.
The bill is the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, sponsored by Rep. Mike Bost of Illinois, the Republican chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee. It bundles more than 60 veterans measures into one package. To pay for it, the bill changes how the Department of Veterans Affairs rates two common conditions: tinnitus and sleep apnea. Tinnitus is a constant ringing in the ears, often caused by gunfire and explosions. Sleep apnea is when a person’s breathing repeatedly stops during sleep. Both show up often among people who served in combat.
The VA assigns each service connected condition a percentage, called a rating, and that rating decides the size of a veteran’s monthly disability check. Lower the rating and the check shrinks. The VA’s own projection says the changes would reduce disability compensation by up to $57 billion over 10 years.
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A voice vote means members shout yes or no and the presiding officer decides which side sounded louder. There is no roll call and no list of who voted which way. Republicans took that route on Wednesday, November 11, the federal holiday set aside to honor veterans.
The timing hit veterans groups hard. More than 200 members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars spent the week in Washington lobbying against the bill and flew home just hours before it came to the floor. Janae Sergio, vice commander of VFW Post 76 in San Antonio, said she believed Republicans brought it up that day because they knew the veterans were leaving and everyone would be distracted with Veterans Day.
The centerpiece of the package is the Major Richard Star Act. Right now, many veterans who were medically retired because of combat injuries before reaching 20 years of service have to give up part of their military retirement pay to receive VA disability compensation. The Star Act ends that offset so they collect both in full. Supporters estimate it would help about 54,000 to 60,000 veterans. The package also expands mental health and substance abuse treatment, supports Gold Star families, and makes the VA’s community care standards permanent for eight years, which lets veterans see private doctors outside the VA system.
Bost and House Speaker Mike Johnson called the package a historic, pro taxpayer win for veterans. Bost said he wants to work with the Senate to get it to Trump’s desk before the end of the year, and he denied that Republicans skipped a fair process.
Labor unions read the community care piece differently, arguing it moves money away from VA hospitals and clinics and toward private companies. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York accused Republicans of gutting the entire infrastructure for veterans’ care.
The bill gives full retirement pay to roughly 54,000 to 60,000 veterans, while the veterans disability pay cuts used to fund it could reach up to 1.5 million.
There was already another way to pay for it on the table. In July, Republicans canceled a planned vote on this same bill after a bipartisan House vote to replace the benefit cuts with unused Defense Department money.
On Thursday, a day after the voice vote, Democrats forced a narrower version to the floor with a discharge petition. That is a tool that brings a bill up for a vote once a majority of House members sign on, even when the Speaker opposes it. A handful of Republicans signed. The narrower bill funds the Major Richard Star Act without the tinnitus and sleep apnea cuts, and it passed 392 to 18. Every Democrat and 181 Republicans voted yes.
Rep. Mark Takano of California, the top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said Republicans chose Veterans Day “of all days” to sneak through the largest cut to veterans benefits in history, and that they went with a partisan process because they knew they did not have the votes. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, a combat veteran, pointed to the VA’s own $57 billion estimate in her response.
Both bills now head to the Senate. Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the incoming chairman of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, called the House Republican move a blatant abuse of procedure and said the cuts to veterans disability pay will be defeated in the Senate. The two bills deliver the same Star Act benefit. Only one of them pays for it out of other veterans’ checks.
