Major Richard Star Act: Where Concurrent Receipt Stands

Update (September 27, 2026): The bill still hasn’t passed either chamber, but it has moved. On May 21, 2026, Reps. Raul Ruiz and Mark Takano filed a House discharge petition, and it reached the required 218 signatures on September 15, 2026. That guarantees a House floor vote, which is expected after the House returns in November. Support has also grown since this post’s cosponsor count: MOAA reported 334 House and 79 Senate cosponsors as of June 8, 2026. In the Senate, another request by Sen. Blumenthal to pass the bill, this time paired with a defense-budget offset, was blocked on June 17, 2026. The status details below reflect the bill as of May 12, 2026.

As of May 12, 2026. The Major Richard Star Act — reintroduced in the 119th Congress as H.R. 2102 in the House and S. 1032 in the Senate — remains one of the most widely cosponsored bills sitting in Congress without a floor vote. As of late March 2026, 317 House members and 78 senators have signed on as cosponsors, a level of bipartisan support most bills never reach. The fix was offered as an amendment to the FY2026 National Defense Authorization Act but was not included in the final conference bill, and Senate unanimous-consent requests were blocked in October 2025 and again on March 3, 2026. The VA offset that the Star Act targets remains in effect.

What concurrent receipt actually is

When a military retiree is rated for a service-connected disability by VA, federal law historically required them to waive dollar-for-dollar from their DoD retirement pay the same amount they receive in VA disability compensation. The waiver is still the default. Two programs, both added in the 2000s, partially or fully restore the offset:

• Concurrent Retirement and Disability Pay (CRDP) — codified at 10 U.S.C. § 1414. Eligible retirees can receive retired pay alongside VA compensation. A VA rating of at least 50 percent is required. For career Chapter 61 retirees, § 1414(b)(1) limits concurrent retired pay to the longevity-based amount; Chapter 61 disability retired pay above that amount remains subject to the offset.
• Combat-Related Special Compensation (CRSC) — codified at 10 U.S.C. § 1413a. CRSC partially restores the offset, but only for disabilities DoD certifies as combat-related.

A retiree who qualifies for both must pick one each year. They can switch during an annual open season but cannot receive both at the same time.

The Chapter 61 gap

Chapter 61 retirees are service members retired from active duty because of a disability, not because they reached 20 years of service. Under 10 U.S.C. § 1414(b), CRDP expressly does not apply to Chapter 61 retirees with fewer than 20 years of service. That exclusion is one gap the Star Act proposal addresses; career Chapter 61 retirees can also have disability retired pay above the longevity amount offset under current law.

In practice, a combat-injured service member medically retired at, say, 12 years of service today faces the full VA offset. Their only partial relief is CRSC, which:

• Covers only the portion of disabilities DoD classifies as combat-related.
• Is computed on a tiered formula that typically does not fully restore the waived retired pay.
• Excludes non-combat service-connected conditions entirely.

For many combat-injured Chapter 61 retirees, the arithmetic means they leave meaningful money on the table every month compared with a peer who reached 20 years of service and is eligible for CRDP.

What the Star Act would change

H.R. 2102 IH, introduced March 14, 2025, section 2(b) would replace all of 10 U.S.C. § 1414(b). For Chapter 61 retirees entitled to VA compensation for a combat-related disability under the § 1413a standard, the introduced proposal would remove both the under-20-years exclusion and the career longevity cap, regardless of service length. Covered retirees would be entitled to full military retired pay alongside VA compensation without the VA offset. This describes the introduced proposal, not current law.

Crucially, the bill does not expand who qualifies as combat-related. It uses the existing § 1413a framework. It also does not change CRDP eligibility for non-combat-related disabilities.

Who counts as “combat-related”

10 U.S.C. § 1413a defines combat-related disabilities as those attributable to at least one of:

• An injury for which the member was awarded the Purple Heart;
• A condition incurred as a direct result of armed conflict;
• A condition incurred while engaged in hazardous service;
• A condition incurred under conditions simulating war (e.g., live-fire training, combat exercises);
• A condition incurred through an instrumentality of war (e.g., military vehicles, munitions, burn pits).

DoD — not VA — makes the combat-related determination, and the standard is separate from VA’s service-connection finding. A retiree can be service-connected for a condition but still denied CRSC if DoD concludes the condition was not combat-related.

CRDP vs. CRSC vs. the Richard Star Act at a glance

Political status and where it stalled

H.R. 2102 was introduced in the House on March 14, 2025, by Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) with bipartisan cosponsors. The Senate companion S. 1032 followed. Both bills sit in committee. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) twice requested Senate passage by unanimous consent — on October 8, 2025, and on March 3, 2026. On the first attempt, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, objected on “double benefit” and cost grounds. On the second, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) objected, citing the federal debt and a $10–12 billion cost estimate. Sen. Blumenthal’s fallback offer of a 60-vote roll call was also blocked.

The Senate version of the FY2026 NDAA contained a Star Act provision, but the House–Senate conference dropped it from the enacted law. That outcome is why major veteran service organizations — MOAA, VFW, WWP, DAV, and others — still list the Star Act as their top legislative priority going into the remainder of the 119th Congress.

CBO scoring

The Congressional Budget Office’s score for H.R. 2102 (CBO publication 62237) breaks the cost out across CRDP and CRSC changes over fiscal years 2026–2036. The direct-spending total is in the tens of billions — materially higher than the roughly $8 billion figure often quoted from advocacy one-pagers, which reflected the narrower H.R. 1282 introduced in the prior (118th) Congress. Sen. Ron Johnson cited a $10–12 billion range on the Senate floor; that figure is also lower than the current CBO direct-spending estimate for the full bill. Veterans should consult the CBO document directly for the current numbers. The beneficiary population is estimated at approximately 50,000 combat-injured medical retirees — the core group the bill is designed to help.

Why the bill is named for Richard Star

Army Reserve Major Richard Star was a combat engineer who served in Operation Desert Storm and later in Iraq and Afghanistan, where he cleared roads of improvised explosive devices. In 2018 he was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer linked to burn-pit exposure. While undergoing treatment, he discovered he could not draw his DoD retirement and VA disability together because he had been medically retired before reaching 20 years of service. He spent the final months of his life advocating for the concurrent-receipt fix. He died on February 13, 2021, at age 51. His story — and the overlap with the PACT Act’s recognition of burn-pit conditions — has kept the bill politically salient.

What combat-injured Chapter 61 retirees should do now

The Star Act has not passed, but combat-injured Chapter 61 retirees still have action they can take regardless of the bill’s fate:

1. Apply for CRSC if you haven’t. CRSC is processed by your branch of service’s CRSC board — not by VA. If you have a combat-related disability and are medically retired, filing a CRSC application with your service is the partial remedy available today.
2. Keep your VA rating current. If your conditions have worsened, file for an increase. Any future Star Act relief would almost certainly key off the current VA rating and CRSC combat-related findings, so keeping those records accurate protects your position.
3. Consider TDIU if you cannot work. Combat-injured retirees whose disabilities prevent substantially gainful employment may qualify for total disability based on individual unemployability (TDIU), which pays at the 100 percent rate.
4. File any new service-connected claim now. The claim-filing process has not changed, and an accurate, up-to-date VA rating is what any future Star Act payment calculation would use.

How to track the bill

The most reliable places to follow the Star Act are Congress.gov’s pages for H.R. 2102 and S. 1032, and the MOAA SITREP, which updates when cosponsor counts move, amendments are offered, or procedural votes occur. We will update this article when the bill sees a floor vote, an NDAA attachment, or an enactment.

Read more

• How to file a VA disability claim — step-by-step filing process
• TDIU (Individual Unemployability) — 100 percent rate for veterans who cannot work
• PACT Act guide — burn-pit presumptions, the exposure category linked to Major Star’s death

Correction — October 21, 2026: Corrected who the introduced H.R. 2102 would cover (eligible Chapter 61 retirees with combat-related disabilities, regardless of service length) and noted that current CRDP law caps concurrent retired pay for career Chapter 61 retirees at the longevity-based amount. Legislative developments keep their stated reporting dates.