Sponsors (4)
The bill grants formal veteran recognition and burial honors to Cadet Nurse Corps members—providing meaningful memorial benefits and improved records—while explicitly limiting access to most VA entitlements and creating modest administrative and fiscal costs.
Surviving Cadet Nurse Corps members and their estates become eligible for VA burial headstones, markers, and related memorial burial benefits under chapters 23 and 24.
Individuals who served in the Cadet Nurse Corps will be formally recognized as veterans and may receive honorable discharges and DoD-issued medals, commendations, plaques, or grave markers, improving official service records and public recognition.
Cadet Nurse Corps service is explicitly excluded from most VA benefits beyond burial-related benefits, so service alone will not create entitlement to VA healthcare, disability compensation, or pensions.
Implementation requires administrative actions by DoD and VA (issuing discharges, updating records), which may cause delays and paperwork burdens for veterans and added workload for federal staff.
Providing medals, markers, and other honors will impose modest costs on Defense and VA budgets for design, production, and distribution, creating a small fiscal impact on taxpayers.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Recognizes Cadet Nurse Corps service (7/1/1943–12/31/1948) as active-duty for limited VA benefits, directs DoD to issue honorable discharges, and authorizes medals/markers.
Recognizes service in the United States Cadet Nurse Corps from July 1, 1943 through December 31, 1948 as qualifying service for a limited set of veterans’ benefits and directs the Department of Defense to issue honorable discharges where warranted. The Secretary of Defense must act within one year to grant those discharges, set the discharge date as the termination date of service, and may produce a service medal, commendation, plaque, or grave marker. The recognition treats that Cadet Nurse Corps service as active duty only for specific VA eligibility and entitlement purposes (including headstones and markers under title 38 chapters referenced), does not create entitlement to other VA-administered benefits solely on that basis, and does not extend Arlington National Cemetery interment rights that would be based only on this service.
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Elizabeth Warren · Last progress December 3, 2025