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House passes slew of bills for vets, troops

The House of Representatives passed a bipartisan collection of seven bills and four resolutions in a pre-Memorial Day rush of legislation aimed at showing service members, veterans and their families that Congress cares.

Three more bills are scheduled for a vote Wednesday.

Included in the pile are important bills such as HR 5826, which would provide the annual cost-of-living adjustment in veterans disability and survivor benefits, and HR 5856, which would approve construction and renovation at veterans medical facilities.

Those bills, along with a measure about reimbursing hospitals that treat veterans requiring emergency care, will be voted on Wednesday.

In the collection of bills that passed, only one is controversial. That measure, HR 6048, would give service members deployed on contingency operations protection from changes in child custody arrangements.

The bill would specifically prohibit a service members’ absence from being considered in determining the best interests of a child and would prevent a court from ordering or modifying an existing child custody order while a member is deployed, with the exception of a temporary order when the best interests of a child is at issue.

Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana, ranking Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, said he wished the House had held hearings on the child custody bill or heard the Pentagon’s views before rushing to pass it, but he did not try to block it.

Other bills passed by the House include:

å HR 5554, which would expand treatment and counseling programs for veterans with substance-abuse problems.

å HR 3681, which would permit the Veterans Affairs Department to launch a media campaign, including paid advertisements, to tell veterans about available benefits.

å HR 2790, which would create a new VA position of director of physician assistant services.

å HR 5729, which would widen the health care provided for children of Vietnam veterans who are born with spina bifida, a disease linked to a parent’s exposure before conception to the herbicide Agent Orange.

å HR 3889, which would order a study of whether vocational rehabilitation programs help veterans find employment.

å HR 5664, which would require an update every six years of VA benefits for veterans who need housing adapted to accommodate their service-connected disabilities.

While the House rushed to pass the bills before the Memorial Day recess, none of the measures will become law in the near future because the Senate has not acted on any of them.