WASHINGTON — The House voted to pass the Major Richard Star Act on Thursday by a margin of 392 to 18, the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs said, concluding a six-year struggle over retirement pay for veterans forced out of military service by combat wounds.
Here’s how it affects veterans. Under current law, a veteran medically retired because of a combat injury gets docked a dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar of VA disability compensation received. Around 59,000 veterans live with that reduction. Serve a full 20 years and you get paid both. Get hurt badly enough to be pushed out early, and the offset applies. H.R. 2102 ends the offset.
The passage was hard-won. Mark Takano, the California Democrat who is the committee’s ranking member, filed a discharge petition to force the bill to the floor, and he turned to the very man whose name it carries. “Six years ago, Major Star asked Congress to fix this. He died before we could,” Takano said. “Today the House did what a bipartisan majority has wanted to do for years. It took a discharge petition and 218 signatures, and it took veterans who refused to quit, but combat-injured veterans will finally keep what they earned.”
For Raul Ruiz, the California Democrat who carried the bill alongside its Republican author, the vote ended a fight that had run more than six years. “We did it! After more than six years of fighting, the House has passed my bipartisan bill, the Major Richard Star Act,” Ruiz said. “This is a historic victory for combat-wounded veterans and their families. It ends the wounded veteran tax, so combat-injured veterans receive both the retirement pay and the disability compensation they earned. Now the Senate must act. We will not stop until every veteran receives the justice and fairness they have earned.”
Chris Pappas has signed on to this bill every Congress since he arrived in 2019, and the New Hampshire Democrat did not try to dress it up. “Every Congress since I got here, I’ve signed on to this bill, and every Congress veterans were told to wait,” Pappas said.
“Combat-injured veterans kept their promise. Today Congress finally kept ours.”
It passed against the wishes of the Republican leadership, a point Chris Deluzio stated clearly. “Today, against the will of the House Republican leadership, we passed a bill to help tens of thousands of my fellow veterans,” said Deluzio, a Pennsylvania Democrat and Navy veteran. “Right now, veterans who had to retire because of their battle wounds are being denied their full retirement pay and VA disability compensation. By passing the Major Richard Star Act, we are saying that it is finally time to right this wrong and stop blocking these hard-earned veteran benefits. The Senate should pass this measure and send it to the President to sign.”
A six-year road to the floor
The bill’s sponsor, Florida Republican Gus Bilirakis, first introduced it in 2020. Richard Star was an Army Reserve major. He argued for the bill in public while cancer was killing him. Star died on Feb. 13, 2021, at 51. Ever since, Bilirakis and Ruiz have reintroduced it in each Congress.
Nothing about the route was easy. In 2021, the Rules Committee kept it out of the annual defense bill, as an amendment, because nobody had come up with an offset to pay for it. By 2023, the cosponsors already topped 290 and the bill sat on the Consensus Calendar. It still never reached the floor.
It appeared again in 2025, once again as H.R. 2102, with more than 330 cosponsors in the House and 79 in the Senate. Takano filed the discharge petition on May 21, 2026. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, signed on Sept. 15 — the 218th signature, the one that forced the leadership’s hand.
In response, House Republican leaders offered a package of their own in June — the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act. It included a diluted version of the Star Act among dozens of other provisions. Takano and Ruiz said no. So did major veterans organizations, Disabled American Veterans among them, which objected to the funding structure and to the cuts and caps the package carried.
Support on Thursday was not in question. The Veterans of Foreign Wars backed the bill. So did Disabled American Veterans, The American Legion, the Wounded Warrior Project, the Military Officers Association of America and dozens of other veterans and military groups.
What happens next
Not a thing yet. The Senate companion bill, S. 1032, is led by Richard Blumenthal, the Connecticut Democrat, and still awaits action over there. First the Senate has to pass it, and the president has to sign it, before any check changes.