In meetings on Capitol Hill this year, I heard the same sentence from congressional staff more times than I can count.

They agreed with the science on blast overpressure. They agreed that rating-schedule recognition for blast-exposed veterans is coming, one way or another.

And then came the sentence from Hill staffers that landed like a thud, “we do not know how to pay for it.”

That sentence built Section 108.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act finances the Major Richard Star Act and a package of genuine benefit expansions by restricting future disability ratings for tinnitus and sleep apnea. Up to 1.5 million future claimants. Up to 57 billion dollars over ten years, by VA’s own analysis.

One generation of wounded veterans handed the bill for another.

The House has stalled three times trying to pass it, and the motion that would have stripped the cuts and substituted unspent Pentagon funds failed by a single vote, 210 to 211.I want to make an argument that goes past this one bill, because the sentence behind it will outlive it.

Congress does not lack the money to keep its promises to veterans. It lacks a principle for where that money comes from. And in the absence of a principle, it defaults to the worst possible answer: take it from other veterans.

We volunteered our lives, our bodies, our minds in service to a Nation, to give our love for one another. There is no greater love than this. Some didn’t come home, others came home injured, ill or suffering life long effects of their service.

When a service member absorbs thousands of overpressure exposures during a career, that cost was incurred the day the round left the weapon system. It was a cost of operating the weapon system, as real as the ammunition and the barrel wear. The Department of Defense bought the capability.

The bill for the human wear on the men and women who delivered it does not become a Veterans Affairs problem to be balanced against other veterans decades later.

It is a defense cost that came due slowly.Once you accept that principle, the financing answers stop being mysterious. They are sitting in plain view, and Congress has brushed past every one of them this summer.

Start with what the law already says that nearly every seems to miss when representing their perspective to the public.

Section 905(b) of title 2 of the United States Code exempts from sequestration “all programs administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.” Not just compensation. All of them.

Congress found that so important it wrote the exemption a second time, inside the veterans’ code itself, at section 113 of title 38, shielding VA accounts from the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act “or any other sequestration law.”

This is not my interpretation. The Congressional Research Service has published it in its sequestration reports for over a decade. And when a question once arose about whether VA medical care fell inside the exemption, the Office of Management and Budget, the very agency that would execute any sequester, concluded in writing that all programs administered by the VA are exempt under Section 255(b).

The enforcement mechanism everyone invokes to demand offsets from veterans cannot legally touch a single VA program, and the government’s own budget office has said so. The remaining budget rules are waivable, and the House proved it by waiving all points of order against this very bill.

The discharge petition for a clean Star Act, sitting a handful of signatures from forcing a floor vote, waives the pay-as-you-go rules outright. The offset was never a legal requirement. It was a habit.

Next, the money Congress has already appropriated and not spent. The failed motion to recommit would have funded the Star Act from unspent Department of Defense funds that exceed 100 billion dollars.

That motion had the support of the VFW, DAV, IAVA, EANGUS, JWV, and SPARTA Pride, and it fell one vote short. The money exists.

Then there is the structural answer, and this is the one I want lawmakers and their staff to sit with, because my organization has modeled it in full.

In our independent fiscal analysis of blast overpressure legislation, prepared in Congressional Budget Office format, we designed a Department of Defense cost-sharing mechanism: an annual transfer equal to two percent of DoD operation and maintenance funds spent on the weapons systems designated as the highest blast-overpressure risks, with a one billion dollar annual floor and automatic Treasury enforcement if the transfer is not made. The systems that cause the injuries help fund the care. Not as charity from the defense budget, but as an honest accounting of what those systems cost to operate.

Over ten years, that single mechanism generates roughly twelve billion dollars without touching one veteran’s rating. Our analysis surfaced something else that should change how Congress thinks about the affordability of veterans’ legislation. When you model these bills honestly, applying the rating schedule the way VA actually applies it, they cost markedly less than the sticker shock suggests.

We surmised nearly between 20 and 30 percent of the blast-exposed cohort we studied already holds a 100 percent disability rating. For those veterans, new presumptive recognition produces almost no new compensation cost, because you cannot be rated above 100 percent.

That one correction produced a seventeen billion dollar offset in our ten-year projection.

The fear that drives Congress to raid future veterans’ benefits is inflated by scoring that ignores how the system actually works, the preclusion of pyramiding under 38 C.F.R. 4.14, for instance.

So the tools exist. A statutory exemption Congress refuses to invoke. Waivers Congress grants itself when convenient. Unspent defense dollars a near-majority already voted to use. A cost-sharing architecture that assigns war costs to the war. Honest modeling that shrinks the bill.

Veterans’ benefits are not a fund from which some veterans may be subtracted to pay for others.

That is what Section 108 would write into permanent law, and it is why the precedent matters more than the provision. If the rating schedule becomes a piggy bank, every future improvement arrives with the same corrosive question attached: which veterans will pay for it?

The next presumptive condition, the next caregiver expansion, the next brain health initiative, all of it priced in the currency of some other veteran’s future claim. A benefits system built on the promise that we care for those who have borne the battle becomes a ledger that must always net to zero inside the veteran population, while the defense budget that created the injuries is never asked to balance its own books.

And it currently appears that if the House fails to correct the issues and passes H.R 9237 in whole, then the Senate holds the pen to amend and send back to the House to mirror it’s bill.

It can strike Section 108, fund the Star Act where the obligation was born, and pass everything else in this package. And it should adopt the principle along with the fix, because the blast overpressure reckoning is coming next. And we’re watching.

The science is settled enough that congressional staff no longer argue with it. The only question they ask is the one that started this article. How to we pay for it, “

The cost of war isn’t paid by politicians, it’s paid for by the warrior and their family. Eliminate Section 108. Pass the Take Care of Veterans Act.

Sources and Substantiation Annex

“The Cost of War Belongs to the War”Cohort of Overpressured Warfighters Action Council (COWAC) | July 2026

This annex documents the source and verification status of every substantive claim in the article.

Claims are grouped by evidentiary category. COWAC invites readers to check the record.

I. Statutory Authorities (verified, primary sources)

Claim: All programs administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs are exempt from sequestration.Source: 2 U.S.C. Section 905(b) (“Veterans programs. The following programs shall be exempt from reduction under any order issued under this subchapter: All programs administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs.”). Text available at uscode.house.gov and law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/2/905.

Claim: Congress enacted the exemption a second time within the veterans’ code.Source: 38 U.S.C. Section 113 (exempting specified VA accounts from sequestration or reduction under part C of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, 2 U.S.C. 901 et seq., “or any other sequestration law”). Enacted by Pub. L. 99-576, Section 601.

Claim: The Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010 incorporates the BBEDCA exemptions.Source: Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010, Pub. L. 111-139, Section 11 (amending BBEDCA Sections 255 and 256); sequestration under the Act proceeds through the BBEDCA framework, carrying the Section 255 exemptions.II. Government Analytical and Administrative Confirmations (verified, secondary official sources)

Claim: The Congressional Research Service has published the veterans exemption for over a decade.Sources: CRS Report R42050, Budget “Sequestration” and Selected Program Exemptions and Special Rules (identifying exempt programs including “all programs administered by the Department of Veterans Affairs”); CRS Report R45941, The Annual Sequester of Mandatory Spending (cataloging Section 255 exemptions at Appendix E and noting that approximately three quarters of all mandatory spending is exempt from the mandatory sequester). Both publicly available at congress.gov and everycrsreport.com.

Claim: The Office of Management and Budget concluded in writing that all VA programs are exempt.Source: OMB determination, issued in response to a question regarding VA medical care, concluding that “all programs administered by the VA, including Veterans’ Medical Care, are exempt from sequestration under Section 255(b).” Referenced in public reporting of the OMB memorandum. COWAC treats the underlying memorandum as an official administrative determination; readers seeking the original document may request it from OMB.III. Congressional Record and Floor Proceedings (verified, official records)

Claim: The House waived all points of order against H.R. 9237.Source: H. Res. 1423 and accompanying report, H. Rept. 119-749; rule provisions for H.R. 9237 published by the House Committee on Rules at rules.house.gov/bill/119/hr-9237 (“Waives all points of order against consideration of the bill” and “Waives all points of order against provisions in the bill, as amended”).

Claim: The motion to recommit failed 210 to 211.Source: Roll Call 249, July 16, 2026, Office of the Clerk, clerk.house.gov (Question: On Motion to Recommit, H.R. 9237; Yeas 210, Nays 211, Not Voting 10).

Claim: The House has stalled three times on this package.Sources: Floor proceedings of June 30, 2026 (failure of the rule); Chair’s postponement of further proceedings on H.R. 9237 pursuant to clause 1(c) of rule XIX, July 16, 2026 (morning); postponement of the final passage question, July 16, 2026 (afternoon), as reflected in the Congressional Record and contemporaneous reporting.

Claim: The discharge petition for the clean Star Act waives pay-as-you-go rules.Sources: Discharge Petition No. 22, Clerk of the House, clerk.house.gov/DischargePetition/2026052122 (targeting H. Res. 1247, providing for consideration of H.R. 2102); public statement of the DAV National Legislative Director that the resolution “would waive PAYGO so that the House doesn’t have to cut veterans’ benefits in order to pass the Star Act.”

Claim: The motion to recommit was supported by VFW, DAV, IAVA, EANGUS, JWV, and SPARTA Pride and would have substituted unspent Department of Defense funds.Source: Description of the motion to recommit circulated by the offering Members and supporting organizations. Status: attributed; COWAC recommends verification against the motion text in the Congressional Record for July 16, 2026 before independent republication.IV. Attributed Figures Pending Primary Source (attributed, secondary official sources)

Claim: Up to 1.5 million future claimants and up to 57 billion dollars over ten years, per VA’s analysis.Sources: Statements of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee minority and of DAV national leadership citing VA analysis of the Section 108 rating-schedule provisions. Status: consistently attributed across the public record to VA’s own analysis; underlying VA document not independently in COWAC’s possession. Figures are presented in the article as attributed, not asserted.

Claim: Unspent Department of Defense funds currently exceed 100 billion dollars.Source: Description of the motion to recommit by its proponents. Status: attributed; see Section III above.V. COWAC Independent Modeling (transparent self-analysis)The following figures derive from COWAC’s Independent Fiscal Analysis of the Blast Overpressure Accountability Act of 2026, Version 3 (May 2026), a stakeholder analysis prepared in the format of a Congressional Budget Office cost estimate. It is not a CBO product, and only CBO produces official cost estimates under 2 U.S.C. Section 653. The full analysis, including uncertainty ranges and sensitivity analysis, is available from COWAC on request.

Claim: A two percent DoD operation-and-maintenance cost-sharing transfer on the highest blast-risk weapons systems, with a one billion dollar annual floor, generates approximately twelve billion dollars over ten years.Source: COWAC Fiscal Analysis V3, Part IX (estimated FY 2027 Tier 1 O&M base of approximately 55 billion dollars; 2.4 percent annual growth; ten-year offset of approximately 12.4 billion dollars).

Claim: Nearly thirty percent of the blast-exposed cohort already holds a 100 percent disability rating, producing approximately seventeen billion dollars in ten-year compensation offset.Source: COWAC Fiscal Analysis V3, Part VII (estimated 29.2 percent prevalence; ten-year compensation offset of approximately 17.0 billion dollars). The analysis discloses that VA does not publish 100 percent rating prevalence by era and occupational specialty; the figure is an estimate derived from VA aggregate data, with sensitivity ranges stated in Part X.VI. Normative ClaimsThe following statements in the article are principles and conclusions, not empirical findings, and are presented as such: “The cost of war belongs to the war”; “The offset was never a legal requirement. It was a habit”; and the closing argument regarding precedent. COWAC grounds these conclusions in the verified material above and in the pro-veteran canon of construction recognized in Brown v. Gardner, 513 U.S. 115 (1994), and Henderson v. Shinseki, 562 U.S. 428 (2011).

Corrections are welcome and will be published: info@cowac.org.