On September 15, Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina added the 218th signature to a discharge petition on the Major Richard Star Act, enough to pull the bill out of committee and force a House floor vote over the objections of leadership.
Stars and Stripes covered the moment: every House Democrat signed, joined by five Republicans, Mace, Jeff Van Drew, Thomas Massie, Brian Fitzpatrick, and Anna Paulina Luna. The next day the House left town for its pre-midterm recess, so the vote the petition forces can't happen before November.
If you're a medical retiree watching this, the fair read is that something changed and nothing has changed yet.
What the Star Act does, in one paragraph
Retire under Chapter 61 with fewer than 20 years of service, which is what happens to most service members medically retired from a combat injury, and federal law reduces your military retired pay dollar for dollar by whatever the VA pays you in disability compensation. Combat-Related Special Compensation gives some of that back, but not all of it, and not for everyone. The Star Act would end the offset outright for retirees whose disabilities are combat-related, letting them keep both checks in full.
We walked through the math earlier this year. The population is small, fewer than 60,000 retirees per
MOAA's account of the petition, and the bill has 340 House cosponsors, which is more than enough to pass it. It has never gotten a vote.
Why a bill with 340 cosponsors needed a petition
Cost. The Congressional Budget Office's current estimate is more than $78 billion over 2026 through 2036, up from early estimates around $10 billion, and House leadership won't bring a bill of that size to the floor without an offset. The offset leadership chose was the one you've read about here: the Take Care of America's Veterans Act, introduced in June, would have paid for the Star Act partly by
cutting future VA ratings for tinnitus and sleep apnea. That package was pulled before a floor vote in July after veterans' groups objected to funding one set of disabled veterans by cutting another.
A discharge petition is the House's way around a leadership blockade. Once 218 members sign, the signers can call the bill up themselves. The version attached to this petition, House Resolution 1247, is a revised Star Act, and the revision doesn't carry the tinnitus and sleep apnea cuts. It also doesn't carry an offset.
What happens in November, and what doesn't
The House is scheduled back after the midterms. When it returns, a signer can move to bring the resolution to the floor, and leadership's options narrow to voting it down, letting it pass, or finding a procedural way to moot it. With 340 cosponsors, a straight up-or-down vote almost certainly passes.
Passing the House is the easier half.
As Stripes notes, the Senate has blocked repeated attempts to pass the standalone Star Act by unanimous consent, and nothing about the House petition binds a single senator. A House-passed bill with no pay-for arrives in a Senate that's refused it four times. The likeliest path to law, if there is one, still runs through a larger package, which is exactly the dynamic that produced the tinnitus and sleep apnea proposal in the first place.
There's also a calendar problem. The petition belongs to this Congress, and this Congress ends in early January. Whatever doesn't pass both chambers by then starts over.
What to do while you wait
Nothing in your retired pay changes until a bill is signed. In the meantime, three things are worth doing.
First,
confirm which kind of retirement you have. The Star Act helps Chapter 61 retirees. If you were medically separated with severance instead of retired, no version of this bill reaches you, and the fight that would is
a records correction, not legislation.
Second, if you're not already receiving CRSC, apply. The combat-related determination your branch makes for CRSC is the same determination the Star Act keys on, and
two rulings this year widened who can collect it and how far back.
Third, pay attention in November. We'll cover the vote if it happens. We'll also cover it if leadership finds a way to keep it from happening, because that will tell you more about the bill's future than the petition did.
Where we come in
We're a veteran-led firm, and medical retirement and combat-related pay are part of what we do: fixing the rating that separated you instead of retiring you, and the CRSC determinations that decide how much of your retired pay you keep. If your retirement paperwork never sat right,
reach out.
