Cammack Votes to Pay Combat-Wounded Veterans in Full, Backs 60-Bill Package for Veterans and Their Families

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Congresswoman Kat Cammack (FL-03) this week voted on legislation that would end a decades-old penalty on combat-wounded veterans and protect the benefits of Gold Star spouses.

On Veterans Day, the House passed what House Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost calls the most comprehensive veterans package in a decade: more than 60 veterans-focused measures to expand health care access for rural veterans, cut red tape at VA, and ensure surviving spouses aren’t penalized for finding love again.

Right now, a surviving spouse who remarries before age 55 forfeits survivor benefits. The Love Lives On Act ends that penalty, letting them keep those benefits and restoring TRICARE coverage if a later marriage ends.

“We owe veterans, active duty servicemembers, and their families a debt we will never be able to fully repay,” said Congresswoman Cammack. “For too long, we’ve walked back our promises to these brave men and women even after they’ve kept theirs. If you lost your husband or wife in service to our country, you shouldn’t have to choose between finding love again and keeping the benefits your family earned, and if you’re wounded in combat and medically retired, Washington shouldn’t dock your pay. It is fitting the House is acting on these important bills as we observe Veterans Day, and I will keep fighting every single day for veterans in North Central Florida and around the country.”

Beyond the Star Act and the Love Lives On Act, highlights of the package include:

Benefits for veterans and survivors

• Raises monthly pay for veterans with the most severe service-connected disabilities, the first significant increase in decades
• Boosts survivor payments an extra 1% a year for three years
• Guarantees surviving spouses of veterans lost to ALS the full survivor benefit, no matter how long the illness lasted

Health care

• Expands suicide and overdose treatment and speeds up admission to VA residential treatment programs
• Extends VA’s community suicide prevention grants for three more years
• Locks in community care access standards for eight years, so veterans far from a VA hospital keep their options
• Puts a lactation space in every VA medical center

Claims and accountability

• Stops VA from denying a claim because a veteran missed a single exam
• Lets the Board of Veterans’ Appeals decide appeals that raise the same issue together, under a three-year pilot
• Sends military sexual trauma claims to a specialized team
• Gives veterans one VA phone number to call, with call centers in every time zone

Families and caregivers

• Extends health coverage for family caregivers six months after the veteran passes away or leaves the program, with help getting back to work
• Lets spouses and dependent children receive a VA headstone, whatever the date of death

Jobs and education

• Raises GI Bill housing pay for student veterans studying online or training in apprenticeships
• Expands VET TEC tech training to fields like artificial intelligence and semiconductors

These reforms are backed by more than 30 veterans and military family organizations, including the Military Order of the Purple Heart, the Military Officers Association of America, TAPS and Gold Star Spouses of America.

Earlier this week, the House also passed the Veterans’ Compensation Cost-of-Living Adjustment Act (H.R. 8552), which raises VA disability compensation and survivor benefits on December 1 to keep pace with the cost of living.

Cammack also voted in favor of the Major Richard Star Act (H.R. 2102).

This bill allows veterans with combat-related disabilities who were medically retired before 20 years of service to collect their military retirement pay and their VA disability compensation in full. The Congressional Budget Office counts about 58,000 retirees who would qualify. Cammack has cosponsored the bill in every Congress she has served.

North Central Florida is home to about 57,000 veterans, and Florida has about 1.4 million, the third most of any state. The district anchors the nation’s largest VA health care system, from the Malcom Randall VA Medical Center in Gainesville to the Lake City VA Medical Center.

“I wanted to serve twenty years, and I would have, except for what happened to me in the war. We have so many young veterans who served two or three years before they were blown up by an IED in Iraq or Afghanistan, and they still get their retirement cut. It’s just not fair. Every veteran wants the other veteran to be treated fairly, especially those who gave of themselves in combat, and we appreciate and support Congresswoman Cammack’s efforts to get these veterans what they earned,” said Captain Stephen Petty, U.S. Army (Ret.), a Vietnam helicopter pilot from Ocala, FL.

“We support the effort to pass the Star Act, and we appreciate Congresswoman Cammack standing up for our veterans,” said Charles Calhoun, President of the On Top of the World Veterans Club and Chairman of the Marion County Veterans Advisory Council.

###