Legislative Updates

National Legislative Director: Doug Brown, Squadron 22 Vermilion

Department Legislative Director: Bill Lutz, Squadron 22 Vermilion (Also National Deputy Legislative Director)

National Legislative Priorities - LAW (Legislative Advocacy Week) 2025 - Fpr full details please the forms page for a downloaded pdf

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As part of AMVETS’ Legislative Advocacy Week (LAW), we would like to share this list of our top priorities for legislative action this year. These priorities are reflective of issues important to AMVETS members nationally and locally, and they were presented by our National Commander Horace Johnson at the joint House and Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing in February:

1. Implement the Veterans Continuum of Wellness & Bolster Mental Wellness and Suicide Prevention Efforts in the VA and Armed Forces
2. Ensure the Completion of a Successful and Seamless Electronic Healthcare Record
3. Encourage A New VA Approach to TBI Treatment and Neurorehabilitation
4. Revolutionize Federal Procurement to Reduce Waste, Empower Small Businesses, and Improve Accountability
5. Increase Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) for Our Survivors
6. Pass the Major Richard Star Act
7. Expand Access to VA Care While Strengthening the VA Health Care System
8. Develop a National Veterans Strategy to Align Care and Benefits to Focus on Outcomes and Success
9. Honor POWs/MIAs

More information on each can be found below. Please reach out to Danielle Forand (danielle@thenimitzgroup.com) for additional information or questions.

1. Implement the Veterans Continuum of Wellness & Bolster Mental Wellness and Suicide Prevention Efforts in the VA and Armed Forces

The VA’s mental health system is built on a flawed model that waits until veterans are in crisis before providing them with care. This approach does not work. Veterans need a system that equips them with the tools to build resilience before they reach a breaking point. It is time for a fundamental shift. AMVETS calls for Congress and the VA to take immediate, decisive action to address the crisis taking place at the VA—not through more of the same failed approaches, but through real reform.

The Veterans Continuum of Wellness, a multi-layered approach to engaging veterans at every stage of their mental health journey, fundamentally reshapes how the VA delivers mental health care. It creates a six-tier framework that prioritizes early intervention, self-sufficiency, and post-traumatic growth, ensuring that veterans have access to the proper support before they need crisis intervention.

The framework establishes:

• Proactive training for all transitioning service members, ensuring they have foundational skills in emotional regulation, mindfulness, financial literacy, and relationship building.
• Expanded access to alternative therapies, including peer-led counseling and community-driven mental health support.
• A shift away from long-term medication as the default treatment ensures veterans explore non-pharmaceutical interventions before being placed on psychotropic drugs.

This model offers a cost-effective alternative to the VA’s high-cost, low-return mental health model. By focusing on prevention rather than crisis response, the framework reduces reliance on expensive inpatient care while improving veterans' mental health outcomes. ​

Other ideal legislative outcomes:

• Re-authorize the Staff Sergeant Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program, lifting the caps on funding to ensure successful models reach as many veterans as possible across the country.
• Establish a Select Committee on Suicide for Veterans and Servicemembers.
• Support increased Congressional oversight at the VA to understand the proportion of veterans who previously utilized VA services at any juncture and ultimately died by suicide and ensure the massive VA budget is being used in the best manner to seek alternative solutions for veteran suicide.
• Introduce and support legislation that requires the DoD to establish a proactive footprint to help train servicemembers on what is necessary to live lives worth living and the components that create positive outcomes in our lives.

2. Ensure the Completion of a Successful and Seamless Electronic Healthcare Record

AMVETS fully supports the VA’s efforts to create a seamless and effective electronic healthcare record (EHR). For decades, the VA has faced the challenge of having to deal with a broken system of transitioning veterans from DoD to the VA. Even today, millions of veterans are suffering from lost information, missing data, paper records, and more. AMVETS is also keenly aware that VISTA is no longer a tangible option, meaning something has to take its place to serve our veterans and servicemembers now and in the future.

AMVETS is adamantly against using this issue for political gain and will vocally and locally disagree with any members of Congress who imply that ending this effort is in our nation’s veterans’ best interests. Nothing could be further from the truth.

However, AMVETS does support a high level of oversight and holding the VA accountable for getting their act together on this project. When the DoD had similar issues, highly competent technical leaders were assigned to lead the implementation and were given strong authority to make decisions and make them happen.

AMVETS is looking forward to the continued rollout of the EHR program and its next phase of deployment in 2026. With proper oversight and accountability, AMVETS believes this will lead to ideal health outcomes for our country’s veterans.

3. Encourage A New VA Approach to TBI Treatment and Neurorehabilitation

AMVETS recognizes the undeniable link between TBI and mental health challenges, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and suicidality. Veterans suffering from untreated or poorly managed TBIs often experience heightened psychological distress, exacerbating their mental health conditions and placing them at greater risk of self-harm. Given these connections, AMVETS advocates for policies that integrate mental health support into TBI treatment plans, ensuring that veterans receive holistic, interdisciplinary care that addresses both the physical and psychological aspects of their injuries.

We ask Congress to pursue legislative initiatives that strengthen TBI-specific care within the VA healthcare system. Similar to the Staff Sergeant Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program, AMVETS hopes that the VA can find meaningful, innovative care models from the private and nonprofit space and integrate these practices into the department.

Key provisions of this proposal include:

• The creation of a grant program, awarding $30 million annually over three years to nonprofit organizations, academic institutions, and private healthcare providers specializing in neurorehabilitation.
• The launch of a pilot program to integrate best practices developed by grant recipients into VA medical facilities.
• Prioritization of non-pharmaceutical treatments, such as innovative prevention, detection, and treatment approaches for TBI, with particular attention to non-pharmacological solutions.
• Continuous monitoring and follow-up care to ensure that veterans receive sustained support and long-term treatment for the neurological effects of TBI.

By introducing and passing legislation establishing these programs, Congress will ensure that veterans with brain injuries receive effective, modernized care that leads to long-term recovery rather than dependency on medication and crisis-driven interventions.

4. Revolutionize Federal Procurement to Reduce Waste, Empower Small Businesses, and Improve Accountability

The VA and other federal agencies continue to face challenges with underperforming contractors in key areas such as IT modernization, health care services, benefits delivery, and infrastructure. Excessively large, bundled contracts, poor oversight, inflated cost estimates, and limited contractor accountability have wasted billions of dollars on projects that fail to deliver for our nation’s veterans.

Key findings in federal procurement include:

• Multiple billion-dollar contracts have experienced severe cost overruns.
• Large bundled contracts reduce accountability and restrict competition.
• The VA systematically favors large prime contractors over Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs), limiting opportunities for small businesses and reducing service quality.
• Federal procurement frequently prioritizes large corporations that rely on international suppliers, missing opportunities to strengthen domestic manufacturing and national security.

Congress must take action to improve federal procurement by:

• Promoting smaller, more manageable contracts to increase accountability and competition.
• Reducing barriers for small and mid-sized businesses, particularly SDVOSBs, by eliminating excessively high past performance requirements.
• Strengthening contractor accountability through clear performance metrics, penalties for cost overruns, and mandatory periodic audits.
• Increasing transparency by requiring third-party evaluations of large contracts and leveraging end-user feedback to identify underperforming vendors.

These reforms will ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly while improving service quality for veterans. Congress can modernize federal procurement and ensure that VA services meet the highest standards by enhancing competition, increasing oversight, and reducing reliance on underperforming contractors.

5. Increase Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) for Our Survivors

For decades, survivors have been working to garner a small increase in Dependency and Indemnity (DIC) payments for the men and women left behind after our servicemembers die in duty to our nation. Current payments are not even on par with federal workers. We all must ensure that these men and women who paid the ultimate price with their loved ones are well taken care of. Supporting this critical change is a small way to repay that debt and highlight that our nation is grateful for their sacrifice.

We support the Caring for Survivors Act, recently re-introduced by Representatives Jahana Hayes and Brian Fitzpatrick. We look forward to seeing this issue elevated this Congress.

6. Pass the Major Richard Star Act

AMVETS fully supports the immediate passage of the Major Richard Star Act. For nearly two decades, AMVETS has supported the Bilirakis family in their efforts to end the unfair and antiquated statute preventing veterans from receiving their earned Department of Defense retirement pay and disability compensation from the VA. It is unconscionable that we are reducing retirement pay by every dollar of disability pay received for those who have given so much in defense of our Nation.

7. Expand Access to VA Care While Strengthening the VA Health Care System

The VA has pledged to serve our veterans’ health care needs, but the means to accessing this care is different for every veteran. Millions of rural and highly rural veterans face a unique combination of factors that create disparities in health care not found in urban areas.

AMVETS realizes that the best healthcare option for veterans will first provide a strong, well-run, and fully staffed VA. As a support mechanism, AMVETS supports the VA’s utilization of private care to provide ease of care to veterans, as is often the case for veterans in rural areas.

Women’s health care within the VA is a critical area that demands investment. Women are the fastest-growing segment of the veteran population, yet VA medical centers still lack adequate resources, staffing, and infrastructure to support their needs fully. AMVETS strongly urges Congress to ensure that VA facilities are fully equipped to provide comprehensive, gender-specific care, including:

• Expanding women’s health clinics and dedicated care coordinators at every VA facility.
• Increasing access to specialized mental wellness & health services tailored to women veterans, including support for military sexual trauma (MST) survivors.
• Improving maternity care and childcare options to ensure continuity of care for veteran mothers.

VA healthcare should be the first and best option for veterans, and strengthening the system must remain the top funding priority. Expanding choice should never come at the expense of weakening the VA’s ability to provide world-class, veteran-specific health care.

8. Develop a National Veterans Strategy to align care and benefits to focus on outcomes and success

AMVETS is fully aware of the challenges of reorienting a VA system that so many veterans have come to rely on. Sadly, veterans currently existing in low-lows would have benefited from a more proactive approach had it existed previously. We have to start somewhere because our current policy is misaligned, provides negative incentives, and leads to poor outcomes.

As such, we continue to recommend that Congress create a new office with significant funding; we recommend $1 billion to be achieved by not providing the casual annual increase to the mental health budget. The office should be given the mission of creating a National Veterans’ Strategy that orients the future goals and vision of a VA that focuses on veterans maintaining their warrior wellness and providing proactive outreach, training, benefits, and services with the intent that they go on to live lives of purpose and meaning while maintaining a state of physical wellness and understanding the components of living a mentally healthy lifestyle.

9. Honor POWs/MIAs

AMVETS is proud of President Trump’s signing of Senator Elizabeth Warren’s legislation, the National POW/MIA Flag Act, into law in November 2019. This bi-partisan legislation requires the display of the POW/MIA flag outside of high-profile Federal buildings and National war memorials throughout the year. Previous law only required the POW/MIA flag to be displayed on Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, National POW/MIA Recognition Day, and Veterans Day.

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AMVETS continues to encourage members of Congress to display the flag outside their offices, as is protocol.