Disabled American Veterans, the nation’s largest disabled-veterans advocacy organization, is warning that a sweeping congressional package could reduce disability compensation for as many as 1.5 million veterans over the next decade. The measure, known as the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, bundles more than 60 individual veterans bills — including popular benefit expansions — with a funding offset built around new VA disability-rating criteria for sleep apnea and tinnitus. DAV has called the tradeoff a budget-driven decision that shifts cost onto veterans who already carry service-connected conditions. Months after it was introduced, the bill remains stalled in Congress, its fate tied to a VA rulemaking deadline that is still unresolved.
The $57 Billion Offset Built on Sleep Apnea and Tinnitus Ratings
The controversy centers on how the legislation pays for its new spending. Sponsors structured the package’s financing around disability-rating criteria the Department of Veterans Affairs first proposed in February 2022 for hearing, ear, throat and respiratory conditions — a rule that has sat unfinished for more than three years while Congress now writes its projected savings into a separate bill’s budget math. The offset would apply broadly rather than narrowly, covering new disability claims as well as reassessments of ratings veterans already hold.
That underlying VA proposal remains just that — a proposal. More than three years after it was published, the Federal Register still classifies the rule covering ear, nose, throat, audiology and respiratory ratings as a proposed rule rather than a final one, meaning none of its changes carry the force of law even as lawmakers rely on its projected savings to help finance the broader veterans package.
The steepest reductions under that rule would fall on veterans who manage sleep apnea with a continuous positive airway pressure machine, the standard treatment VA doctors prescribe, since the revised criteria would weigh how much impairment remains after treatment rather than the treatment itself. Tinnitus, the most commonly compensated service-connected condition in the VA system, would in many cases lose its stand-alone rating and be folded into the underlying condition that causes it. DAV has condemned the pairing, warning that up to 1.5 million veterans could see compensation reduced to help finance other parts of the same legislative package, describing it as a decision that shifts cost onto veterans who already carry service-connected injuries.
The scale of the affected population is part of what makes the fight so charged. More than 3.6 million veterans currently receive compensation for tinnitus alone, according to figures Senate Democrats have cited in opposing the offset. Not every one of those veterans would see a reduction, but the size of the pool is why advocacy groups describe the potential effect as among the broadest disability-rating changes VA has attempted since it began overhauling its ratings schedule roughly a decade ago.
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A Floor Vote That Failed by a Single Ballot
The bill’s path through Congress has been just as contested as its financing. House leadership brought the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act, formally H.R. 9237, to the floor in mid-July, only to see a motion to recommit the bill to committee fail by a single vote, 211 to 210, on July 16. That procedural defeat left the legislation without a final passage vote and forced Republican leaders to pull it from further floor action for the time being. The near-even margin reflected how narrowly divided lawmakers are over pairing long-sought veterans benefits with reduced future disability compensation.
The Senate saw a parallel standoff. A Republican attempt to pass the bill by unanimous consent was blocked by Democrats, and a competing Democratic proposal to replace the disability-rating offset with unspent Department of Defense funding was blocked by Republicans in turn. Congressional aides describe the measure as stalled rather than dead, with both chambers still working from the same underlying text months after it was introduced. Neither side has offered a new version that resolves the funding dispute.
Veterans’ organizations are not unified against the package. The largest veterans service groups have split over the offset specifically, with some arguing Congress should not fund new benefits by reducing compensation tied to medical conditions, while others have concluded that the votes needed to pass the bill’s most popular provisions on their own were never there, and that rejecting the full package risks losing every measure in it, not just the contested one. That disagreement has slowed any consensus fix.
The Same Bill Also Carries the Major Richard Star Act
The disability-rating offset is not the only reason the legislation has drawn attention. The same package also contains the Major Richard Star Act, which would let an estimated 54,000 combat-injured, medically retired veterans collect both full military retirement pay and VA disability compensation without the dollar-for-dollar offset current law imposes — a change advocates say could add roughly $1,200 a month for some beneficiaries. Supporters argue that provision alone justifies moving the broader package forward, while opponents say tying it to reduced tinnitus and sleep apnea compensation forces veterans and their advocates to choose between two benefits that should never have been linked together.
VA officials told Congress in January that they expected to finalize the underlying disability-rating criteria by the end of the current fiscal year, which closes September 30. The department has since told reporters that no changes are “planned or imminent” and that the 2022 proposal would need significant revisions before it could be finalized, leaving the timeline uncertain even as lawmakers write the projected savings into H.R. 9237’s budget math. Existing recipients generally cannot have a rating reduced solely because the schedule changes, VA officials have said, without evidence the underlying condition has improved.
That gap between a legislative funding assumption and an unfinished regulation is the crux of the standoff. Until VA publishes a final rule, the bill’s funding offset remains a projection rather than a settled figure, and the 1.5 million veterans DAV says are at risk have no way of knowing whether Congress will revive the package as written, rewrite its financing around the Major Richard Star Act alone, or let the current version lapse without ever reaching a final vote.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team before publication.
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