mike bski@BskiMike22802
Today is for them.
The ones who are finally at peace. The ones who are no longer fighting a war — physical or internal.
The kid from Ohio who signed up at 18 because he believed in something bigger than himself — and died in a desert 6,000 miles from home at 19. The Staff Sergeant who left behind a wife, three children, and a folded flag. The Marine who stepped on an IED on his third tour and never made it to the medevac. The soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen who gave the last full measure — not because they had to, but because they CHOSE to.
They chose to stand between the rest of us and whatever was coming. That is not a bumper sticker. That is a human being who made a decision most people in this country will never have to make — and paid for it with everything they had.
So today, before anything else — THANK YOU. Rest easy. The watch is done. We have it from here.
But there is something this country needs to sit with today. Because Memorial Day has always been for the dead — and the war did not stop when the shooting stopped. It came home. It is STILL coming home. And it is STILL killing the men and women who served, one diagnosis at a time, one funeral at a time, one name quietly added to a list that Congress keeps pretending does not exist.
The war never ended. It just changed shape.
SFC Heath Robinson was a combat medic. Kosovo. Iraq. He came home, eventually. But the smoke from the burn pits — open-air fires where the military incinerated everything, chemicals, medical waste, ammunition, EVERYTHING — had already done its work. He developed cancer. His immune system turned against him. He died in 2020. The PACT Act is named after him. A man who survived the deployment, made it back to his family, and was still killed by that war. Just slower. Quieter. With no flag-draped coffin on the news.
Staff Sgt. Wesley Black. Two combat tours. An IED in Iraq ended his military career while he was still in his early thirties. He went home to Vermont. Developed colon cancer from burn pit exposure. He was 36 years old when he died in 2021.
Thirty-six.
He fought the last part of his war alone, in a hospital room, waiting for a country that had already moved on.
Then there is Major Richard Star. Army engineer. Desert Storm. Multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending years clearing IED-laden roads so other soldiers could travel them without dying. He breathed that burn pit smoke deployment after deployment because nobody warned them. Nobody protected them. The fires just burned.
He developed stage-four lung cancer. His body was destroyed in service to this country. He was medically retired just short of twenty years — because the service he gave broke him before he could reach that finish line. And then — while he was in chemotherapy, breathing through an oxygen tank just to stay alive — the United States government told him he could not receive BOTH his military retirement AND his VA disability at the same time.
He testified on Capitol Hill traveling on oxygen. He could barely stand. He kept going anyway.
He died in February 2021. He never saw the bill that bears his name become law.
Because it has not.
His widow Tonya left her career to care for him. Then she picked up his fight — until she could not carry it anymore. She is gone too. Both of them dead. Congress is STILL debating whether it can afford to honor them.
That is not a policy disagreement. That is a disgrace.
Veterans die by suicide at a rate ONE AND A HALF TIMES higher than the civilian population. Every single day — EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. — approximately 17 to 22 veterans take their own lives. Post-traumatic stress is not a weakness. It is a WOUND. An invisible one. And the VA that is supposed to treat it has a waiting list and an appointment three months out.
Burn pit cancer is spreading through the OIF and OEF generation like a slow fire nobody wants to name. It is our generation's Agent Orange. TBI complications from stacked blast exposures — concussion on top of concussion, tour after tour — are showing up now in men and women in their forties and fifties. The enemy did not need a second shot. The first one is still working.
Right now, approximately 50,000 to 54,000 combat-wounded, medically retired veterans are having part or ALL of their military retirement STOLEN through what is called the concurrent receipt offset — the WOUNDED VETERAN TAX. Their bodies gave out before they could complete twenty years. That was not their choice. That was the war's choice. And the law punishes them for it anyway, taking their retirement dollar for dollar against their disability pay.
Sgt. Lyle Allen. Multiple IED blasts. Traumatic brain injury rated 100% permanent — the government's own doctors say it will NEVER improve. Still losing his retirement. "We are retired without retirement." His words.
Sgt. LaToya Lucas. OIF veteran. RPG hit her Humvee in 2003. Purple Heart recipient. Every year she gets a statement showing exactly how much of her earned retirement was taken back. She can see the number. She knows what it cost.
Sgt. Amanda Tallman. Single mother. Combat-related medical retirement. The offset removes more than $1,200 a month from her household. From a single mother. Because she was wounded.
Major Star and Tonya gave everything — including the time they had left — fighting to end this. They did not get to see it through. That mission belongs to us now.
WE carry it. In their names. In Heath's name. In Wesley's name. In the name of every veteran who came home only to keep dying from a war the country declared finished without asking them.
The Major Richard Star Act — H.R. 2102, S. 1032 — ends the Wounded Veteran Tax. Seventy-six senators co-sponsored it. More than 300 House members co-sponsored it. The most co-sponsored bill before Congress. The CBO certified the cost at $9.75 billion over ten years. Congress passed a $924.7 BILLION defense bill the day after blocking it.
They found the money. They chose not to find the will.
We need our Reps to sign the discharge petition — H.Res. 1247. It forces a floor vote. Call your representatives. Tell them Richard and Tonya Star did not die so Congress could keep running out the clock.
Say their names today. Heath. Wesley. Richard. Tonya. The twenty-two who did not make it through last night. The ones in a hospital somewhere right now watching the retirement number go down while the cancer goes up.
THEY belong on this wall too.
The mission is not finished. Not until Congress passes the Major Richard Star Act. Not until every combat-wounded veteran this country broke in service gets what they were promised. We owe them that. Every single one.
Pass it. NOW.
Major Richard Star fought this battle on oxygen, barely able to stand, until the day he died. Tonya carried it after him until she had nothing left to give. Heath Robinson. Wesley Black. Soldiers, medics, engineers — people who came home only to keep fighting a different kind of war, and lost that one too. They passed this torch whether they wanted to or not. It is in our hands now. THEIR mission. THEIR sacrifice. THEIR names on the bill that Congress keeps failing to pass. We do not get to put the torch down. Not until every combat-wounded veteran this country broke in service collects every dollar they were promised. That is not a political position. That is a debt. And we are not done until it is paid.
@MajorStarAct @StarActEnemies @GuntherEagleman
#MAGA #Veterans #majorrichardstaract
