THE GIST: H.R. 9237 is being sold as the most comprehensive veterans package in years, and parts of it deserve that. But the same bill pays for a chunk of its own generosity by cutting future disability ratings for sleep apnea and tinnitus, tripling a VA home loan fee, and charging newly eligible Guard and Reserve borrowers extra just to use a benefit other veterans get for less. None of that money came from the general fund. It came out of other veterans’ pockets. Every veteran should see the whole ledger before their VSO tells them how to feel about it.
What’s Actually In This Bill
The headline provisions are real. The Major Richard Star Act ends the “wounded warrior tax,” letting roughly 54,000 combat-disabled retirees keep both military retirement pay and VA disability compensation instead of one offsetting the other. The Love Lives On Act lets surviving spouses remarry without losing Dependency and Indemnity Compensation, and there’s caregiver support, suicide prevention funding, a…
