On Veterans Day, House approves bill to boost compensation for many veterans despite floor drama over disability ratings
Compensation and cost trade-off
Under current law, combat-injured military retirees with fewer than 20 years of service give up part of their retirement pay when they also receive VA disability compensation. Lawmakers from both parties support allowing those retirees to receive their full military retirement and injury compensation.
The Republican bill would help fund the increase by changing how tinnitus or sleep apnea is rated for future veterans. Those changes would reduce disability compensation for some future claimants, but would not affect veterans already receiving payments for those conditions.
Rep. Raul Ruiz, a California Democrat, criticized the trade-off, saying, “It does not take care of veterans. It takes from them.” Democrats had urged their members to oppose the bill, arguing that one group’s benefits should not be cut to pay for another’s.
Disputed voice vote
The House chamber was packed and noisy after an earlier vote. After the bill’s title was read, presiding officer Rep. Addison McDowell, a North Carolina Republican, called for those in favor to say aye and those opposed to say no.
No Democrat called for a roll-call vote. Rep. Mike Bost, the Republican chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, accused Democrats of being “asleep at the wheel.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said the bill passed because no one requested a vote by name.
Rep. Mark Takano, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said the minority had no opportunity to request a recorded vote. He called the passage a “shallow, a hollow victory” and predicted the measure would go nowhere in the Senate.
Next steps in Congress
The Republican bill had been withdrawn earlier this year after its supporters lacked enough votes. The House passed it this time, but the vote process drew criticism from Takano and Cory Geisler, national commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Geisler said in a statement that lawmakers should have recorded every member’s position if they believed the proposal deserved passage. He criticized what he described as political maneuvering over veterans’ benefits without public accountability.
Democrats have a separate bill expected to come to a House vote Thursday. Supporters used a discharge petition to force consideration, but their measure does not include offsets. If it passes, the Senate could choose that bill, the Republican measure, or neither, leaving the issue for a Democratic-controlled Congress next year.
Key points
- The House passed a veterans package on Veterans Day, including compensation changes for an estimated 58,000 combat-injured retirees.
- The proposed change could raise compensation by about $1,450 per month on average.
- The Republican bill would lower disability compensation for some future veterans with tinnitus or sleep apnea.
- A separate Democratic bill, without offsets, was expected to receive a House vote Thursday.