Sponsors (18)
The bill improves and clarifies veterans' burial benefit eligibility and preserves current pension-payment rules—benefiting many veterans and simplifying administration—while increasing federal costs, creating short-term VA processing burdens, and carrying a small risk of unintended benefit reductions without careful implementation.
Veterans and their families gain clearer and expanded access to VA-provided headstones, markers, or burial receptacles because the bill clarifies eligibility dates (including retroactive coverage for certain prior deaths) and ensures deaths on/after Jan 5, 2021 are covered.
Clarifying statutory language, correcting cross-references, and reordering provisions reduces ambiguity and paperwork, helping VA staff and families interpret rules more easily and potentially speeding benefit decisions.
Extending the pension payment limit through May 31, 2033 preserves current benefit levels for eligible veterans and survivors and provides administrative continuity for the VA, avoiding near-term policy disruption.
Expanding or clarifying burial benefit eligibility will increase VA program costs, which may raise fiscal pressures on taxpayers or require budget reallocation within the VA.
Retroactive eligibility, renumbering, and other statutory adjustments could create additional claims, records searches, and temporary paperwork burdens that slow processing and create backlogs for veterans, families, and VA staff.
Deleting or altering a statutory paragraph risks unintentionally removing or reducing burial benefits for some veterans or survivors unless the change is precisely clarified elsewhere.
Based on analysis of 4 sections of legislative text.
Removes a Nov. 11, 1998 cutoff for certain VA burial items, changes rules for headstones/markers (applies to deaths on/after Jan 5, 2021), and extends a pension limit to May 31, 2033.
Removes a November 11, 1998 date-of-death cutoff for certain VA headstones, markers, and burial receptacles, expands eligibility for those benefits, changes wording and ordering of rules about providing headstones/markers (with those wording changes applying to deaths on or after January 5, 2021), and extends a statutory pension-payment limit date from November 30, 2031 to May 31, 2033. The changes adjust who may receive VA burial items and extend the time a specific pension payment rule remains in effect.
Introduced January 23, 2025 by Rudy Yakym · Last progress January 23, 2025