The House of Representatives is not holding regular votes this week.

House leadership ended its pre-election voting schedule on September 16, sending members back to their districts to campaign ahead of the November 3 midterm elections. The House has held only brief pro forma sessions since then and is not scheduled to resume regular legislative voting until after the election. Speaker Mike Johnson defended the House’s record, while critics included both Democrats and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who pointed to unfinished business. AP News

For veterans, the important question is not who won that argument.

It is this:

What happened to the veterans legislation that was supposed to get done?

Unfortunately, much of it is still sitting exactly where we left it.

The Big Veterans Package Is Still Stuck

We have spent much of the summer following the Take Care of America’s Veterans Act.

It is a huge collection of veterans legislation covering disability compensation, caregivers, surviving spouses, mental health, health care, military retirees and other benefits.

It also contains the Major Richard Star Act provisions intended to allow certain combat-disabled military retirees to receive more of both their military retirement and VA disability compensation.

The House reached the legislation in July but postponed further proceedings after lawmakers failed by a single vote to send the measure back for changes.

As of this week, the official legislative record still shows July 16 as the latest action on H.R. 9237. USLegi

In other words:

The House returned after its summer recess.

It had an opportunity to resume work on the veterans package.

Then it left Washington again without completing it.

That is simply where the legislation stands.

The VA Refinance Fee Is Still Sitting in There Too

There is another reason I continue watching this legislation carefully.

The Take Care of America’s Veterans Act includes a proposal to increase the VA funding fee on an Interest Rate Reduction Refinance Loan, or IRRRL, from the current 0.50% to 1.42% for veterans who are not exempt from paying the funding fee. Air Force TImes

That increase has not become law.

But neither has it disappeared.

As we discussed previously, the issue is bigger than simply charging a veteran a few thousand dollars more.

A larger funding fee can increase the new mortgage balance and reduce some of the monthly savings created by obtaining a lower interest rate.

That means it can raise the threshold at which refinancing becomes financially worthwhile.

For veterans who financed homes when mortgage rates were substantially higher, that is important.

The VA streamline refinance exists specifically to make it easier for eligible veterans to reduce the rate or payment on an existing VA mortgage when the numbers work. VA continues to warn borrowers to evaluate the entire transaction—including costs—not simply an advertised rate. Veterans Affairs

For now, nothing has changed.

But we will keep watching it.

The Senate Actually Did Some Veterans Work This Week

The Senate remained in Washington and conducted legislative business this week. U.S. Senate

And there was one new bipartisan veterans proposal worth mentioning.

Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Republican Senator Tim Sheehy of Montana introduced the GRACE for Military Survivors Act on September 22.

Under current law, surviving spouses and children generally have one year to decide whether to place certain military death gratuities and Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance proceeds into qualifying tax-advantaged accounts such as Roth IRAs and Coverdell Education Savings Accounts.

The legislation would extend that decision period from one year to three years.

A bipartisan companion measure has also been introduced in the House. Senate Veterans Affairs

This is not a massive benefit expansion.

But I think the reasoning is easy to understand.

A family that has just lost a servicemember should not necessarily have to make complicated, long-term financial decisions while still dealing with the immediate consequences of that loss.

The legislation has not passed.

But this is exactly the kind of relatively narrow bipartisan veterans issue that Congress should be able to consider when regular legislative work resumes.

The Veterans Appeals System Got Some Attention Too

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee also held a hearing September 23 on nominees for positions directly involved in veterans appeals.

Those included a nominee to chair the Board of Veterans’ Appeals and nominees to serve as judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Senate Veterans Affairs

Those positions matter.

Veterans who disagree with VA decisions eventually depend on this appeals structure to review disputes over disability claims and other benefits.

A nomination hearing is not the same thing as fixing the appeals process, but staffing the institutions responsible for deciding veterans’ cases is real government work and deserves mention.

VA Hit a Disability-Claims Milestone

Outside Congress, VA announced something significant this week.

The department says it processed more than 3 million disability claims during fiscal year 2026 as of September 18, surpassing the record set during the entire previous fiscal year.

VA also reports that the average time required to complete a disability-claim decision has fallen to 75.6 days, compared with 141.5 days in January 2025, and that current claims-processing accuracy is approximately 94%. Those figures come from VA itself rather than an independent audit, so they should be understood as the department’s reported performance figures. VA News

If veterans are receiving accurate decisions faster, that is meaningful.

Speed, however, is only valuable if the decisions are correct.

And that brings us to another report this week.

An Independent Watchdog Found a Real Problem With Community Care

The VA Office of Inspector General released an audit September 24 looking at nearly 2.6 million requests from community health-care providers seeking additional or different care for veterans.

VA rules generally require those requests to be decided and the appropriate parties notified within three business days.

The inspector general found only about 1.2 million of the requests were decided within that time standard.

Notifications took an average of approximately 12 days—four times the required period.

The OIG identified backlogs, staffing shortages, manual processes and complicated systems as contributing factors and issued six recommendations for improvement. Department of Veterans Affairs OIG

This is the kind of statistic that matters much more to me than political talking points.

A veteran waiting for medical care does not particularly care which administration created the computer system, which Congress wrote the rule or who gets blamed for the backlog.

They care about getting the care they were promised.

And About Those VA Contract Cuts…

There has also been a considerable political argument over VA contracts canceled as part of the administration’s cost-cutting efforts.

An independent VA Inspector General report issued this week gives us a more useful picture than either side’s headlines.

The OIG examined 2,210 contract actions considered between January and June 2025. It found that 435 contracts valued at approximately $1.1 billion were ultimately terminated, while the remaining contracts were either retained or reinstated.

Importantly, the inspector general found that VA had put review procedures in place that generally complied with federal acquisition rules and helped reduce the risk of eliminating critical services.

But the OIG also found that VA had provided Congress with inaccurate information about some of the contract actions in 2025, largely because officials did not consistently understand the contracting terminology. VA later provided Congress with a corrected list. The OIG issued no recommendations from this review. Department of Veterans Affairs OIG

That is a good example of why I try not to reduce these issues to partisan headlines.

The investigation did not conclude that every contract cancellation endangered veterans.

It also did not conclude that the government’s reporting was flawless.

Both things can be true.

So Where Does That Leave Veterans?

The House is away from regular legislative business until after the election.

The Senate is working.

The major veterans package remains unfinished.

The proposed VA refinance-fee increase remains unresolved.

A bipartisan military-survivor bill was introduced.

VA reports substantial progress processing disability claims.

And an independent watchdog says veterans are still experiencing unacceptable delays in parts of the community-care system.

That is actually a pretty good snapshot of Washington.

Some things are improving.

Some things are moving.

Some things remain broken.

And some very important things are simply waiting.

The Bottom Line

Our servicemembers do not get to decide that a mission is inconvenient because an election is approaching.

Our veterans certainly cannot put their disabilities, mortgages, medical needs or family responsibilities on hold until November.

Congress operates differently, and election-year recesses are not unusual. But the practical consequence this year is clear: major veterans legislation requiring further House action cannot move through the House while regular voting is paused. Good Morning America

So we will keep watching the Senate.

We will keep watching the VA.

And when the House returns after the election, we will look again at what was promised, what actually gets passed and what veterans may be asked to give up to pay for it.

Because that remains the purpose of The Give and Take:

Not who wins the political argument—but whether the people who served this country actually receive the benefits, care and opportunities they were promised.

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About the Author

Clay Edmonds is the Corporate Educator and Complete Mortgage Advisor at Complete Mortgage LLC in Hollywood, Florida, and the creator of MortgageSimplified.net. With more than four decades of experience in real estate finance, Clay focuses on simplifying the mortgage process and helping veterans, borrowers and real estate professionals make smarter financing decisions.

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