Legislation addressing the retirement pay of veterans with combat-related disabilities is making its way through Congress, but could collapse amid a funding clash.
The House on Thursday overwhelmingly passed a multibillion-dollar bill that would fully fund a key retirement benefit for combat-injured veterans with disabilities, but the measure’s fate in Congress was uncertain amid a dispute over how to pay for it.
Republican leaders moved to sidestep the disagreement on Wednesday by speeding through a competing measure before Democrats had a chance to try to defeat it. That bill, the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, addresses the retirement pay change and a wide range of veterans programs, all financed by future cuts in benefits for sleep apnea and tinnitus, two conditions that often afflict combat veterans.
The narrower version that passed on Thursday, by a lopsided vote of 392 to 18, was forced to the floor by Democrats and would omit those cuts. All Democrats and 181 Republicans backed it.
The competing bills each face steep obstacles in the Senate. Senator Jerry Moran, Republican of Kansas and the chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he supported the Republican-led package, whereas Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, the senior Democrat on the committee, said he could not back the proposed benefit cuts.
Central to the dispute is the Maj. Richard Star Act, which would allow veterans who retired because of combat-related disabilities to receive their full retirement pay, rather than having it reduced dollar-for-dollar by their disability benefits, as required by current law.
Veterans groups have long lobbied for the Richard Star Act, but over the years, lawmakers have repeatedly balked at its cost, recently estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be about $12.8 billion over a decade.
