For two years the fight over companies that charge veterans a cut of their disability benefits has been a stalemate in the House.
One bill would have let them operate legally in all fifty states with a fee cap. The other would have put penalties back in the law that already bars them. The first
cleared committee on a party-line vote in 2025 and never reached the floor. The second never left committee. Tuesday's election ended the stalemate, and Wednesday morning the incoming House committee chairman
listed "predatory claims agents" among his first targets.
The two bills
The industry's bill, introduced as the CHOICE for Veterans Act, would have created an accreditation path for for-profit consultants, capped fees at $12,500, and banned overseas call centers. Its argument was that veterans are already paying these companies, so Congress should regulate the practice rather than pretend it doesn't exist. Its sponsor was a committee member from the majority. Every veterans' service organization that testified opposed it.
The other bill, the GUARD VA Benefits Act, would reinstate criminal penalties for charging a fee to prepare or file a claim without accreditation. The penalties existed until 2006, when Congress removed them in a rewrite and never put them back. Since then the prohibition has stayed on the books and the enforcement has been nothing, which is the gap
Veterans Guardian and
Trajector built their businesses in. Its sponsors were in the minority. In January they aren't.
What changes, and when
Nothing in the lame duck. The outgoing majority isn't going to pass the GUARD Act in its last eight weeks, and the CHOICE Act has no path through a Senate that's about to change hands. Both die on January 3 with the rest of the unfinished business.
In January, the GUARD Act or its successor gets reintroduced by a chairman who co-wrote the oversight agenda it sits on. A committee markup in the first half of the year is likely. A floor vote is plausible; the House has passed veterans' bills with large bipartisan margins before, and the CHOICE Act's committee vote was narrow enough to suggest some of the majority's members didn't want to be on record for it. The Senate is the harder half, and even a bill that passes both chambers needs a signature from an administration that hasn't said where it stands.
So the timeline is: no change in 2026, a fair chance of a penalty bill in 2027, and no certainty.
What doesn't wait for Congress
The law today already says what it said in 2006. Federal law bars anyone who isn't accredited by the VA from charging a fee to prepare, present, or prosecute a claim, and it bars accredited representatives from charging for an initial claim at all. The missing piece is the federal penalty. Two things have filled the gap while Congress argued.
The states. More than a dozen have passed their own laws, some banning the companies outright, some capping fees and requiring disclosures. Colorado's, which took effect last year, allows the companies to operate with a fee cap and written-contract requirements, which means a Colorado veteran who signed with one has state-law rights the contract may not mention.
The courts. The Veterans Guardian judgment and the Trajector bankruptcy came from state attorneys general and private plaintiffs using consumer-protection law, not from the VA. That route stays open regardless of what Congress does, and a Democratic committee is more likely to subpoena the companies' contracts than to leave the states to it.
If you've signed a contract
Read the fee clause for what it keys to. Most of these contracts take a multiple of your monthly increase, five or six times the difference between your old and new rating, and some keep collecting from back pay. The legality of that clause under your state's law is the question a Democratic committee is about to spend hearings on, and it's a question your state attorney general's office may already be answering.
Then ask what you're paying for. The companies' pitch is that the VA process is too hard to do alone, and that's true for a lot of veterans. The part of the pitch that's false is that paying a percentage is the only way to get help. An accredited attorney can represent you on an initial claim; the law bars the fee, not the representation.
Our Valor First Claim program does exactly that, at no charge, under the same accreditation rules the sharks are trying to get around. The VSOs do it too.

If you're about to sign, don't. If you've signed, you may have state-law grounds to get out, and the window for the companies to collect may be closing.
Where we come in
We're a veteran-led firm. We're accredited, we represent veterans on first claims for free because the law requires it, and we've watched the industry that charges for the same work spend two years trying to get the law changed. The election took that option off the table. If you're carrying one of these contracts,
reach out.
