The House passed the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act on Wednesday afternoon, sending a wide-ranging package of benefits changes for veterans and their families to the Senate after it was approved by voice vote on Veterans Day.
The bill had been pulled from the House floor without a vote earlier in the summer by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA). This week it returned and passed without a recorded tally, after no member asked for a roll-call vote.
Rep. Mark Takano of California, the top Democrat on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he and his staff were “engaged in negotiations” over last-minute changes to the bill at the moment it came up for a vote, which kept them away from the floor. He said no Democrat requested a recorded vote “because of the treachery and trickery of the majority.”
“While these negotiations are going, they rammed through this vote,” Takano said.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) defended the process and the substance of the bill, saying Democrats were free to voice objections on the floor if they wished.
“If a few of them want to go voice their objections, they can go and make it clear on the House floor why they’re against our veterans on Veterans Day,” Scalise said. “But I was proud to support it. And, of course, you saw there’s tremendous support for the bill.”
What the bill does
According to a summary circulated after passage, the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act would:
- Raise the housing allowance for veterans in apprenticeships
- Allow certain retirees with combat-related disabilities to collect both disability pay and military retired pay
- Extend benefits to surviving spouses who remarry
- Increase dependency and indemnity compensation for families
- Create a new supplemental monthly allowance for certain disabled veterans
- Bar the VA from denying a claim solely over a missed exam
- Expand support for family caregivers
- Extend the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program
- Expand VA mental health research
- Codify eligibility standards for the Veterans Community Care Program
The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs celebrated the outcome on social media, calling it “a landmark bill that delivers on the promises Congress has made to disabled veterans and Gold Star families” and saying it would expand affordability, increase VA benefits, and improve health care access for 32 million American families.
The bill now moves to the Senate.
The vote came a day after a separate, unrelated House measure — Rep. Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — failed by a vote of 211-204.
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