Ranking Member Mark Takano’s Remarks As Prepared

WASHINGTON— Ranking Member Mark Takano (CA-39) delivered the following opening statement as prepared at the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs Legislative hearing covering, "H.R. 6047, the 'Sharri Briley and Eric Edmundson Veterans Benefits Expansion Act of 2025', and H.R. 4077, the 'GUARD Veterans’ Health Care Act’. The Ranking Members' closing remarks, as delivered, are below as well.

Opening remarks:

Mr. Chairman, we are going to be spending a lot of time today talking about the VA Home Loan Guaranty program, and before I begin my opening remarks, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the untimely passing of John Bell. Mr. Bell served as the Executive Director of Loan Guaranty Services for many years and testified before this committee on a number of occasions. His steady guidance steered VA through the COVID-19 pandemic and helped save tens of thousands of veterans from foreclosure. His leadership left an indelible mark on the VA Home Loan program. Please join me in a brief moment of silence for Mr. Bell.

Before moving on, I also want to thank the witnesses who are here today to help us understand what is at stake.

Ms. Briley, thank you for being here and for your courageous advocacy on behalf of survivors across this nation. Your husband, Chief Warrant Officer Three, Donovan Lee “Bull” Briley — a “Night Stalker” killed in Mogadishu — is a hero who lived a life of service, and your decades of work supporting Gold Star families honors his legacy every day. Your testimony reminds us that behind every statistic is a home forever changed.

Mr. Edmundson, thank you and your family for sharing the story of your son, Eric who is here with us today. I was honored to meet with you, Eric and your family yesterday. Your testimony lays bare what round-the-clock caregiving truly requires — physically, emotionally, and financially — and why additional support for families like yours is not optional, but essential.

Kristina, Welcome back to testifying before the committee — And I want to acknowledge something that is obvious to all of us: she is here today very pregnant, and yet still doing the hard work of representing VFW’s membership. That grit is the definition of service. Your long record of advocacy — including your work on the PACT Act — strengthens this Committee’s work daily.

Mr. Wheaton, thank you for your leadership and your decades of service with PVA. Your injury 36 years ago began a lifetime of advocacy to ensure veterans with spinal cord injuries receive the dignity, opportunity, and support they earned. We appreciate you lending your expertise and voice to this discussion.

All of your stories — and the lives they represent — are the very reason this work must be done right.

Chairman Bost, just a few short weeks ago, you and I stood together on the floor of the House to support the Veterans Compensation Cost of Living Adjustment Act, an annual legislative action that you and I strongly support.

As I said at the time, veterans, their dependents, caregivers, and families deserve every penny we as a Congress can deliver for them. So, any policy idea that seeks to increase those benefits commensurate with the sacrifice of those we serve deserves to be heard.

There is bipartisan agreement on that.

There is also bipartisan agreement that an increase in benefits for severely disabled veterans and their survivors is long overdue.

It is why I strongly support both the Caring for Survivors Act and the Love Lives On Act.

It is why I support expanded access to care and benefits through new presumptions of service connection.

And in a more perfect world, where once again I sit where you are sitting today, those bills and many more would be among our highest priorities. However, that is not the world we are in at present, and we are left to consider the legislation that you have chosen to put before the committee today.

Regarding the Majority’s bill H.R. 6047, the aims of this bill are noble. Its potential to help survivors and catastrophically disabled veterans is real. But I cannot support the mechanism chosen to pay for it.

As we all know, Mr. Chairman, policymaking is about choices. And nearly every bill we move… or don’t move… requires that we make tough choices. And in this case Mr. Barrett and the cosponsors of this bill have chosen to pay for much-needed increases in Special Monthly Compensation and DIC by charging disabled veterans thousands of dollars in new fees to access their earned VA Home Loan benefit. That is a choice I cannot accept.

The Majority could have:

• requested a waiver of House PAYGO rules,

• sought offsets from other committees,

• used offsets already at our disposal, or

• advanced this bill without an offset, as Congress did on a bipartisan basis with the PACT Act.

They chose none of these paths.

Instead, Mr. Barrett and the authors of this bill have chosen to pit one group of veterans against another--offering long-overdue help to survivors and catastrophically disabled veterans, but only at the direct expense of other disabled veterans. And they did so not as a last resort, after exhausting every other way to pay for this increase, but as a first choice.

This proposal will create an entirely new, unprecedented tax on disabled veterans, specifically a tax on disabled veterans with a disability rating of 70% or below, who will now have to pay a fee to access their earned VA Home Loan benefits.

Since the home loan program was created in 1944, the American people have never asked disabled veterans to pay a funding fee. And we shouldn’t begin now.

So we’re clear how this would play out, under this bill, 3.2 million current veterans (point to chart), and countless more going forward, would face higher costs just to use their earned home loan benefit.

The average cost for a home in the United States is about $514,000. (point to chart). A disabled veteran using the VA Home Loan would be forced to pay an extra $17,000 at closing, on average. And that number is far more in higher cost areas.

Without a doubt Mr. Barrett’s bill cuts benefits from one group of disabled veterans in order to fund benefits for another group of disabled veterans. This is a very troubling precedent, and one that I simply cannot choose to support.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the other bill on today’s agenda, the GUARD Veterans’ Health Care Act.

This legislation gives VA the authority to seek reimbursement from veterans’ Medicare Advantage and Medicare Part D plans for any healthcare services or prescription drugs veterans who are enrolled in these plans receive at VA.

We have the bill’s sponsor, Representative Doggett, here with us today to tell us more about it, and I don’t want to steal any of his thunder, so I will keep my opening remarks on it brief.

But before I close, I’d just like to point out the contrast between Mr. Barrett’s bill and Mr. Doggett’s bill.

One bill, Mr. Barrett’s, will take money away from disabled veterans in order to fund much-needed increases in benefits for survivors and severely disabled veterans.

The other bill, Mr. Doggett’s bill, will take money away from insurance companies that have been profiting from enrolling veterans in Medicare Advantage plans—to the tune of as much as 23 billion dollars per year for healthcare services their enrollees got at VA, rather than from Medicare Advantage providers.

Unlike Mr. Barrett’s bill, the GUARD Veterans’ Health Care Act is a bipartisan, bicameral measure. I am proud to be co-leading this bill with Representative Doggett, as well as fellow Veterans’ Affairs Committee member Dr. Murphy, and Republican Representatives David Schweikert and John Joyce.

On the other hand, Mr. Barrett’s bill has attracted only Republican co-sponsors in the House.

The GUARD Veterans’ Health Care Act has the support of numerous veterans’ service organizations and consumer advocacy organizations and is the result of thoughtful, bipartisan, bicameral collaboration and cooperation. Unfortunately, Mr. Barrett’s bill is not. So, the divergence between what the Majority is proposing and what Mr. Doggett is proposing couldn’t be more clear.

As I said earlier, I know how essential these increases to SMC and DIC are. They can mean the difference between keeping the lights on or buying food for some people. Not even to speak of the myriad care needs this money would help address.

But the Republicans have engineered an impossible and false choice pitting one group of disabled veterans against another when we know there are plenty of other ways to handle this cost.

I want everyone here—and watching at home—to know this: We are working urgently and in good faith to find another way to pay for DIC and SMC increases that does not tax disabled veterans. Disabled veterans already pay taxes, just like the rest of us. And Americans are overwhelmingly willing to dedicate their tax dollars to support disabled veterans. We only need to ask.

We do not have to accept a false choice.

We do not have to choose between survivors and disabled veterans.

We can—and must—choose a path that honors both.

So I say to my colleagues: reject the cynicism of forcing disabled veterans to shoulder this burden.

Choose a better way forward…. Choose a path that, that will increase benefits for those who so urgently need them and protect benefits for those who already rely on VA. To the survivors, caregivers, and veterans in this room: We see you. We hear you. And we are fighting for a solution worthy of your sacrifice.

And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.

Ranking Member Takano’s Closing Remarks.

• Print
• Email
• Tweet