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Jimmy Lee Armel 2 days ago · I need every single person who follows this page to actually read this one, not scroll past it. There is a bill sitting in front of Congress right now called the Major Richard Star Act, and it is the closest we have ever come to fixing one of the most disgusting injustices this country does to its combat wounded veterans. If you have never heard of it, that is by design, because Washington does not like talking about the ones they shortchange the most. Here is the problem in plain terms. If a service member is medically retired because of a combat injury before they hit twenty years in, the government makes them choose. They cannot collect their full military retirement pay and their full VA disability pay at the same time. For every dollar of disability compensation they receive, a dollar gets taken out of their retirement check. That is not a benefit. That is a penalty for getting hurt defending this country. Right now there are fifty nine thousand combat injured veterans losing an average of twelve hundred dollars a month because of this offset. Men and women who bled for this country are getting billed for it on the back end. The Major Richard Star Act ends that. It lets combat injured, medically retired veterans keep both checks in full, the retirement pay they earned through their service and the disability pay they earned through their sacrifice. No more choosing. No more offset. Just what they are owed. This bill is named after Major Richard Star, a combat engineer who cleared roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan, was diagnosed with cancer from burn pit exposure, medically retired with a one hundred percent VA rating, and spent his final months on this earth fighting Congress to fix this before he passed in twenty twenty one. He did not live to see it happen. We can still make sure his name means something. Here is what should embarrass every single person in Washington. This bill has more than three hundred and thirty cosponsors in the House and more than seventy five in the Senate. That is overwhelming bipartisan support, Republicans and Democrats standing together on something for once. And Congress still would not bring it to a vote. So this year House members had to force it with a discharge petition, a rare move that only happens when leadership refuses to do its job. Every single House Democrat signed it. Five Republicans crossed over and signed too, Nancy Mace, Brian Fitzpatrick, Jeff Van Drew, Thomas Massie, and Anna Paulina Luna. On September fifteenth, that petition hit two hundred eighteen signatures, a majority of the entire House. That means a floor vote is coming. It has to sit on the calendar for seven legislative days the House is in session, and with the House heading into recess, that window is expected to open up around November. I have worn the uniform. I did six deployments, five to Afghanistan and one to Iraq. My first mission was Objective Berlin, and I know exactly what it costs to serve this country in combat. I also know men who came home medically retired and combat injured, watching their retirement check get eaten alive by an offset that never should have existed in the first place. This is not a partisan issue. This is not a political football. There are fifty-nine thousand veterans who already paid the price once, being asked to keep paying it every single month because Washington could not get out of its own way. Call your Representative. Call Speaker Johnson's office. Tell them you want a clean vote on the Major Richard Star Act, H.R. 2102, no delays and no watered-down substitute bundled in to pay for it by cutting future veterans' benefits. These men and women earned every dollar of both checks. It is time this country stopped nickel-and-diming the people who bled for it.