I am a U.S. Navy and U.S. Navy Reserve veteran with my military service in public information.

For the better part of the last two decades, I have continued to stay in contact with a naval public affairs association and numerous other related military and veteran contacts.

One of my ongoing personal contacts is retired Rear Admiral Tom Jurowsky, the former Navy chief of information services. He gave this nation 31 years of enlisted and commissioned service. This is the guy to whom I continue to render a “snappy hand salute.”

I recently learned from the admiral of a travesty being inflicted upon injured combat veterans of all branches.

As a point of information, out of Michigan’s 10 million residents, nearly 470,000 of them are veterans, with many being combat injured.

Here, in part, is what I learned from a recent editorial the admiral penned:

BACKGROUND AND THE FACTS

Under current policy, military members forced to retire after a combat-related injury must forfeit a dollar of military retirement pay for every dollar of Veterans Affairs-provided disability benefits they receive. Reducing the retirement pay of a combat-disabled veteran — effectively using it to pay for their disability benefit — is as wrong as it sounds.

It’s very shallow thinking for our lawmakers to tell a combat-injured servicemember that they are worried about “the cost” of ending an unjust pay offset. It’s a tone-deaf approach — especially when the same lawmakers use wasteful continuing resolutions and other fiscally irresponsible practices to avoid important budget decisions.

In essence, we are telling combat-injured servicemembers that our nation cannot afford to pay them for their service. We love telling them, “Thank you for your service,” but not enough to pay and honor them for their sacrifice.

That is not how we keep faith with those who have chosen to volunteer to serve our country and go in harm’s way, especially when military recruiting is in crisis mode.

Military retirement pay and VA disability compensation are two benefits established by Congress for entirely different reasons. Reducing pay because of a combat disability is not the way to achieve savings.

Legislation to correct that wrong, the Major Richard Star Act, has the support of 72 senators and 327 representatives who already cosponsor the bill. The Star Act would repeal that unfair offset that prevents eligible combat veterans from accessing both their VA disability benefits and retirement pay.

Legislation for the Star Act must be included in the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act. Congress must say, “The Star Act must be a priority, so we can recognize those who have paid the price for showing bravery and courage for our country.”

The hangup, it appears, is that Congress must figure out how to pay for the Star Act by cutting government spending somewhere else, in accordance with the “CUTGO Rule.” CUTGO is short for cut-as-you-go and is an internal House rule, meaning that it does not apply to consideration of legislation in the Senate. CUTGO prohibits consideration of legislation that would increase mandatory spending over the period covered by the budget. It’s meant to restrain increases in spending from new legislation to ensure that it will not add to the deficit.

There are clearly many ways Congress can achieve savings without putting the cost back on our military members.

The legislative champions for the Star Act have been Sens. Jon Tester, D-Montana, and Mike Crapo, R-Idaho. On the House side, it’s been Reps. Gus Bilirakis, R-Florida, and Raul Ruiz, D-California.

“Imagine a servicemember getting injured during their fourth deployment,” said Bilirakis. “While they had been close to full retirement and benefits, they will now have their hard-earned retirement reduced since they did not reach 20 years of service through no fault of their own. These heroes voluntarily took up the call to protect our nation, and there should be no question that they are able to receive the benefits they earned … They earned their (Department of Defense) retirement the hard way. It’s time to fix this hidden tax on our combat injured.”

Political leaders like Tester, Crapo, Bilirakis and Ruiz are saying their colleagues must make certain our veterans are not shortchanged by unfair rules that cancel out one earned benefit so they can receive another.

Veterans should not be pushed aside because they were injured in war. Regardless of their time in service, those veterans have earned all their benefits through extraordinary sacrifice while doing what their country asked them to do.

Combat-injured service members deserve better.

CALL TO ACTION

Take minutes out of your day to direct correspondence or telephone calls to your Michigan congressperson and senators. For this newspaper’s readership region, the Congressman is Jack Bergman (a retired U.S. Marine Corps general) and Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters (a former U.S. Naval Reserve lieutenant commander).

You can find their contact information at house.gov or senate.gov or by calling 202-224-3121.

Finally, share this information with your friends across the nation. Ask them to immediately contact their elected officials.

This is truly an injustice to those who served and gave their all.

Jeffrey D. Brasie is a retired health care CEO. He frequently writes historic feature stories and op-eds for various Michigan newspapers. As a Vietnam-era veteran, he served in the U.S. Navy and U.S. Naval Reserve. He served on the public affairs staff of the secretary of the Navy. He grew up in Alpena and resides in suburban Detroit.