The House voted 392-18 on Thursday to pass the Major Richard Star Act, sending to the Senate a long-stalled bill that would end a pay offset affecting roughly 58,000 medically retired veterans with combat-related disabilities.

The bill eliminates a rule that currently forces veterans who were medically retired with fewer than 20 years of service to give up a dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar of VA disability compensation they receive. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the fix would raise affected veterans' combined pay by an average of about $1,450 a month — roughly $17,400 a year — reversing offsets that currently average $2,275 a month, according to The Hill.

All 210 Democrats who voted backed the bill, joined by 181 Republicans and one independent; all 18 "no" votes came from Republicans, and 19 GOP members plus four Democrats did not vote. Speaker Mike Johnson, Majority Leader Steve Scalise and House Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost all voted yes Thursday, a day after opposing a procedural motion on the same underlying bill.

SIX YEARS AGO, MAJOR STAR ASKED CONGRESS TO FIX THIS. HE DIED BEFORE WE COULD.

That's Rep. Mark Takano, the top Democrat on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, invoking the bill's namesake, Army Maj. Richard Star, who died of cancer in 2021 while pushing Congress to close the retirement-pay gap.

A rockier path in the Senate

The House actually passed two competing versions this week: the standalone Star Act, and a Republican-written package called the Take Care of America's Veterans Act (TCAVA), which bundles the Star Act fix with more than 60 other provisions — including changes critics say would cut disability-rating value for future tinnitus and sleep apnea claims. Veterans of Foreign Wars and Democratic lawmakers blasted that trade-off when the House adopted TCAVA by voice vote on Veterans Day, per Military Times.

Senate passage is anything but assured. Republican senators have blocked the standalone Star Act six separate times in recent years, and the Senate has no mechanism to force a floor vote the way the House does. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), the Senate sponsor of the standalone bill, said the GOP's bundled package "will be defeated in the Senate," while Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chair Jerry Moran, a Republican, said he's looking forward to seeing his party's version become law.

Whichever version prevails would still need the president's signature, and under congressional rules, any bill that hasn't cleared both chambers by Jan. 3 — when the current Congress ends — would have to start over from scratch next year. The CBO projects the standalone fix would cost about $12.75 billion over 10 years; if signed into law in December, the pay change would take effect with January's retirement checks.