Jason Leisey served nine years as an infantryman and received a Purple Heart after he was severely injured by a car bomb in Iraq. John Beasley served as an intelligence soldier in Afghanistan and had to leave after 17 years when he developed sarcoidosis. Austin Chapman was hit by an improvised explosive device while serving as a combat medic in Afghanistan, leaving him with nerve damage and a post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis after six years of service.
All three were medically retired and had their military careers cut short by life-changing injuries and illnesses. They are a handful of more than 50,000 disabled veterans who are receiving a smaller check each month because of a policy that reduces the amount of disability compensation and military retirement pay they receive.
But a bill named after an Army combat veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan aims to fix that.
Called the Major Richard Star Act, the bill would change a rule that essentially caps how much money veterans can receive from retirement and Department of Veterans Affairs disability compensation benefits.
Veterans who were wounded and medically retired, also known as Chapter 61 retirees, have their military retirement pay reduced “dollar-for-dollar” by the amount they receive in VA disability compensation. If the bill passes, it would eliminate that reduction, often called an offset, and give veterans their full retirement and disability payments. The offset is due to federal rules against double benefits, or double-dipping — though advocates and veterans argue that because the benefits come from two different sources for two different reasons, it shouldn’t count as a double benefit.
“You are risking everything you will ever experience or have or enjoy forever to do this job,” Chapman said. “It’s just not the population that we think about cost savings for. And I think it’s a war, right? You wanna fight wars? Well, it costs money. The shit ain’t cheap.”
These veterans can receive Combat Related Special Compensation and their branch of service will determine what percentage of their disability is combat-related. This number can be lower than the overall VA disability rating, according to the Military Officers Association of America.
Because of this, a veteran’s disability compensation based on their VA rating might equate to more money than the combat payment based on the combat rating given by the services.
“Those people that retire Chapter 61 [and] are E-4 and below, that’s like their entire retirement from the DoD that is getting wiped out by the strength of their illness and injury,” Beasley said. “Having that restored would be transformative to the vast population. The vast population does not resemble myself, as a senior service person.”
‘Honoring the contract’
Military Service Organizations and Veteran Service Organizations are holding a “full-court press” about the bill and embarking on a major policy push to “pressure” Congress to, at a minimum, hold a hearing to discuss outstanding issues, or at the best, pass it this year, said Joy Craig, an associate policy director for Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Service members “sign a contract that says, I’m gonna give you my youth, the best years of my life, my physical health, even my body and soul if it comes to that,” Craig said, adding that the “other side of that contract is signed by the federal government” which promises a pension for retirement and compensation if troops are disabled during service.
“By having this concurrent receipt offset in the first place, they’re not honoring the contract,” she said. Additionally, Craig noted that the Richard Star Act would let veterans choose whether they wanted to stick with the current benefits offset, or adopt the new policy laid out in the bill.
Republican and Democratic lawmakers have tried to put the policy into the annual defense spending bill and introduced separate pieces of legislation multiple times since 2019. In March, it was reintroduced and garnered the support of nearly three-fourths of the House and Senate, but a Republican senator blocked a motion that would’ve given the bill a quicker, easy-pass vote. Congress can vote on the bill at any point this session, which runs until January 2027.
One of the barriers to getting the bill passed, advocates say, is ignorance over what disability compensation really is. Craig said there’s a “mystique” out there about why veterans receive VA disability benefits if they “still have jobs.”
Top Stories This Week
“It’s not workman’s comp. VA disability is actually payment for the wages you would have earned if you had not been injured in service. That’s an offset to lost wages,” she said about the policy. “It’s not a replacement for work.”
In an April 2025 letter to Congress, 52 military and veteran organizations noted that military retirement pay and VA disability compensation were “established by Congress for entirely different reasons.”
“To reduce earned retirement pay because of a combat disability is an injustice and not the place to achieve savings,” they wrote.
Beasley said he and other veterans “didn’t have a say” in being medically retired, but since that was their fate, they are owed retirement.
“Give a pension that applies. If it’s three years that they spent in service, then great, give them the pension for the three years,” he said. “But it’s completely separate from the extent of the injuries they’ve received.”
Leisey, who was injured by a car bomb in Iraq, suffered third-degree burns over 25% of his body and had his ear and left arm amputated. He was given a 100% VA disability rating and receives $4,458 in VA disability compensation. He receives $347 per month in combat compensation instead of his full retirement pay as a staff sergeant.
“They’re admitting that there is some money owed,” Leisey said about the special combat payment. “Ultimately, it costs me $2,500 per month in retirement pay that I don’t receive.”
If the bill became law, a 2023 Congressional Budget Office cost estimate found that these veterans would receive about $1,200 more each month.
Chapman receives $2,600 in VA disability, but he could collect more as a retired corporal. Last year, he had to leave behind a life his family built over a decade in Littleton, Colorado, and move to Grand Rapids, Michigan, because they couldn’t afford rent and more than $2,000 per child in daycare costs. He said they’re living “paycheck to paycheck” and the policy would “alleviate” their constant stress.
“I don’t think the economy really is designed around young families today,” Chapman said. “It wouldn’t change our financial situation with three kids, but it would at least provide a little extra cushion that we’re not completely f—ked if a job gets lost.”
Separate programs
In September 2025, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), ranking member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, asked to do a roll call vote, which would’ve required 60 senators to pass. But Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, blocked the motion.
In an October 2025 speech, Wicker said the policy amounted to a “double benefit,” sometimes called “double-dipping,” and it was too expensive. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost of the bill would be $9.75 billion.
In response, a group of combat veterans launched a grassroots “Pass the Act” campaign and funded billboards in Mississippi directed at the Republican senator and Air Force veteran. One sign read: “Senator Roger Wicker blocked fair retirement pay for combat wounded veterans. These heroes lose thousands in retirement they’ve earned.”
Sen. Wicker’s office did not respond to Task & Purpose’s request for comment.
In a release after Wicker’s speech, Blumenthal rejected his argument about affordability, pointing to recently passed tax cuts for the wealthy and a nearly $1 trillion Pentagon budget. Blumenthal said the payments are “separately deserved” since “not everyone who is entitled to retirement pay gets disability benefits.”
