#MAJORRICHARDSTARACT - Twitter Hashtag

THE HUMBLE

@THEHUMBLE19

20 minutes ago

#MajorRichardStarAct

mike bski

@BskiMike22802

about 1 hour ago

Major Richard Star died in 2021. The bill with his name on it was introduced that same year. On Thursday the House finally passed it, 392 to 18, and the Senate sent it straight to the committee run by the man who blocked it. I'm deflated, and I owe you the story of how I got here. Tuesday, the discharge petition hit 218. I said "huh" out loud like a man who just watched a dog play the piano. Wednesday was Veterans Day. The House passed TCAVA, in its current state, by voice vote. No names. No roll call. The price tag is future cuts to tinnitus and sleep apnea ratings, which means the bill pays for itself with veterans who haven't even filed yet. Happy Veterans Day. Thursday, the clean Star Act, no offset, no cuts, passed 392 to 18. I'll be honest, I felt something I haven't felt about Congress in a very long time. Hope. Real hope, the dangerous kind. Then I opened https://t.co/zxe6nKe2CF. Entry for 11/12/2026: "Received in the Senate and Read twice and referred to the Committee on Armed Services." Hope lasted about as long as it takes to scroll down one line. To be fair, that isn't a plot. It's jurisdiction. Armed Services is where a bill like this goes. That is exactly the problem. What's next, the chairman who blocked the bill gets to decide whether it ever sees a hearing... wait. I'm being told that is how committees work. A bill in that room can get deader than a squirrel on the highway, and nobody even has to hit the brakes. Here is my prediction, and I would love to be wrong. In October 2025, Sen. @SenatorWicker blocked Sen. Blumenthal's request to pass this bill and called it a "double benefit." If this one keeps its history, it never makes the calendar, we hear "double-dipping" again, and we all get rinky-doo'd one more time. So let's do the double-dipping part slowly, because it's been said a lot and checked very little. Retirement pay is for time served. Disability compensation is for harm caused. Two reasons, two agencies. A 20-year retiree rated 50 percent or higher already collects both, every month, and nobody calls that a scandal. The only group still forced to pick one is the combat-injured retiree who was medically retired before 20 years. The ones the system sent home early. The ones who didn't get to finish the first benefit because the second one happened to them. By that logic, my seatbelt and my airbag are double-dipping, and the fire department should bill me for owning a smoke detector. Try it another way. Your employer matches your 401(k) for years. You get hurt on the job. HR calls and says congratulations on the injury settlement, the match is now your settlement, we don't pay both. You would be in a lawyer's office by lunch. That is how the offset works for about 50,000 wounded veterans. It's not a radical idea to say that isn't right. It's just common sense. Now here is the part I can't stop thinking about. In December 2013, a Mississippi senator went after a $6 billion trim to military retirees' pay. He called it a "broken promise." He wrote that it was "particularly appalling" that it hit disabled veterans, including those forced to retire by a service-related injury. That senator was Roger Wicker. He's a retired Air Force Reserve lieutenant colonel, and I mean that respectfully. He knows what a retirement earned by service is. He fought for one in 2013. And as far as I can tell, he collects his military retirement and his Senate salary at the same time. That's legal, and nobody calls it double-dipping. Retirement for service plus a paycheck for the job he holds now is treated as normal. Retirement for service plus compensation for the injury that ended the career early is treated as a "double benefit." One of those is the bill sitting in his committee. Slight oversight, I guess, that his own words from 2013 don't seem to apply to the veterans in his file cabinet today. And in April, the Secretary of Defense told Wicker's own committee, quote, "we support the Richard Star Act." Fifty-two veterans organizations signed a letter saying Congress created those two benefits for unrelated purposes. Around 80 senators have signed on. The Pentagon says yes. The veterans' groups say yes. The House said yes, 392 to 18. I count one holdout who also happens to hold the gavel. Now let me get ahead of the next thing I'll hear, which is the pay-for, because I know exactly how to get over PAYGO. Statutory PAYGO is a rule Congress wrote, and Congress waives it whenever it likes. One line in a bill saying its budget effects "shall not be entered on either PAYGO scorecard," and it comes off the books. Congress has done exactly that for more than $17 trillion since 2010, and the sequester has never once triggered. Article I, Section 5 says each House makes its own rules. The Senate's version needs 60 votes to waive. The companion bill has about 80 cosponsors. That isn't a close call, that's a landslide with a parking problem. And if somebody still insists on a pay-for, take it from unspent Defense money, which Sen. Blumenthal has already offered. Not from the next veteran with ringing in his ears. So no, I'm not confused about how this gets done. I know how it gets done. It gets done when the chairman decides it gets done. I contacted his office three ways. A direct message. An email. A letter on paper with a real stamp. Zero replies. I've received faster answers from a vending machine. No rush, though. It's only wounded veterans waiting. I don't want a fight. I want a hearing. I want a calendar date. I want the full Senate to vote the way the House just did, with names and numbers on the record, so every veteran in Mississippi and Ohio and everywhere else can see who stood where. So here is my request, Mr. Chairman. Put up or shut up. Put H.R. 2102 on the calendar. I was a combat medic. My job was the worst day of somebody else's career. So forgive me if I don't have much patience for the people who get to file the paperwork on it. But what do I know, I'm only a retired combat medic who reads the roll call before the press release. #MajorRichardStarAct #EndTheWoundedVeteranTax @DavidSt59726197

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