YourVoice.Now Summary
Your MoneyCombat-disabled veterans medically retired before 20 years would keep both their retirement pay and VA disability.
Your Money
Combat-related covers a Purple Heart injury. It also covers harm from armed conflict or hazardous duty. War-like training and war equipment count too. Those medically retired before 20 years of service now give up a dollar of retired pay for each dollar of VA pay.
Combat-Related Special Compensation is a second, separate payment. Veterans who get it now have their retired pay cut by their VA pay first. The bill would stop that cut. A cap on the two payments added together would stay, but it would be measured against full retired pay.
A medical retirement can pay more than years of service alone would earn. Today a veteran with 20 or more years still loses that extra amount when VA disability pay starts. Under the bill they would keep it if the injury is combat-related.
More about this bill
Some veterans give up a dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar of VA disability pay. This bill would end that trade for one group. It covers people medically retired from the service when the disability is combat-related. There would be no 20-year service minimum. Those veterans would draw both checks in full. Medical retirees with 20 or more years of service would gain too. They would keep the extra pay a disability rating adds. The same change would reach veterans who get Combat-Related Special Compensation. Their retirement pay would no longer be cut first. It would start on the first day of the first month after the bill becomes law. Medical retirees whose disability is not combat-related would see no change.
Congressional Summary
Major Richard Star Act This bill allows a veteran with a combat-related disability to receive retirement pay, without reduction, concurrently with their disability compensation. This includes veterans with a combat-related disability and fewer than 20 years of creditable service. (Currently, veterans who receive combat-related special compensation and retirement pay are subject to an offset in retirement pay for concurrent receipt of such benefits.)
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- House
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Introduced in House
- Action Date
- 2025-03-14
- Date Added
- 2026-09-01
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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