Sgt. Walter F. Hartnett IV Green Star Veterans Service Act
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Rep. Bresnahan, Robert P. [R-PA-8]
ID: B001327
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Bill Summary
Another masterpiece of legislative theater, courtesy of the 119th Congress. Let's dissect this farce and expose the underlying disease.
**Main Purpose & Objectives:** The Sgt. Walter F. Hartnett IV Green Star Veterans Service Act (HR 6022) claims to honor veterans who died by suicide with a special flag for their next of kin. How touching. In reality, this bill is a cynical attempt to exploit the emotional appeal of veteran support while doing nothing substantial to address the underlying issues.
**Key Provisions & Changes to Existing Law:** The bill creates a new section in title 36, United States Code, authorizing the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to design and designate a "Green Star Service Flag" for next of kin of veterans who died by suicide. It also establishes licensing requirements for manufacturers and sellers of this flag, because God forbid someone tries to profit from the suffering of others without proper bureaucratic oversight.
**Affected Parties & Stakeholders:** The affected parties include:
* Veterans' families, who will receive a symbolic gesture that does nothing to address the root causes of veteran suicides. * Flag manufacturers, who will enjoy a new revenue stream thanks to this legislation. * The Secretary of Veterans Affairs, who gets to add another bureaucratic task to their already overflowing plate.
**Potential Impact & Implications:** This bill is a classic example of "feel-good" legislation that accomplishes nothing meaningful. It's a Band-Aid on a bullet wound, designed to make politicians look good while ignoring the systemic issues driving veteran suicides. The real impact will be:
* More bureaucratic red tape and licensing fees for flag manufacturers. * A minor PR boost for the bill's sponsors, who can now claim they "support our troops" without actually doing anything substantial. * Continued inaction on addressing the underlying causes of veteran suicides, such as inadequate mental health resources, lack of support services, and the overall failures of the VA system.
In short, this bill is a symptom of a deeper disease: the chronic inability of politicians to address real problems while instead opting for empty gestures and symbolic victories. It's a flag-waving exercise in futility, designed to distract from the fact that our elected officials are more interested in looking good than doing good.
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Rep. Bresnahan, Robert P. [R-PA-8]
Congress 119 • 2024 Election Cycle
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Project 2025 Policy Matches
This bill shows semantic similarity to the following sections of the Project 2025 policy document. Higher similarity scores indicate stronger thematic connections.
Introduction
— 655 — Department of Veterans Affairs ENDNOTES 1. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Division, VHA Directive 1003, “VHA Veteran Patient Experience,” April 14, 2020, pp. 1 and B-1. 2. S. 2372, VA Mission Act of 2018, Public Law No. 115-182, 115th Congress, June 6, 2018, https://www.congress. gov/115/plaws/publ182/PLAW-115publ182.pdf (accessed January 30, 2023). 3. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA History Office, “VA History,” last updated May 27, 2021, https://www. va.gov/HISTORY/VA_History/Overview.asp (accessed January 28, 2023). 4. 38 U.S. Code § 1116, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/38/1116 (accessed January 28, 2023). 5. S. 3373, Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 (Honoring Our PACT Act of 2022), Public Law No. 117-168, 117th Congress, August 10, 2022, https://www. congress.gov/117/plaws/publ168/PLAW-117publ168.pdf (accessed January 28, 2023). 6. H.R. 2471, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Public Law No. 117-103, 117th Congress, March 15, 2022, Division S, Title I, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ103/PLAW-117publ103.pdf (accessed March 18, 2023). Known variously as the Department of Veterans Affairs Nurse and Physician Assistant Retention and Income Security Enhancement Act and the VA Nurse and Physician Assistant RAISE Act. 7. See note 5, supra. — 657 — Section Four THE ECONOMY The next Administration must prioritize the economic prosperity of ordi- nary Americans. For several decades, establishment “elites” have failed the citizenry by refusing to secure the border, outsourcing manufacturing to China and elsewhere, spending recklessly, regulating constantly, and generally controlling the country from the top down rather than letting it flourish from the bottom up. The proper role of government, as was articulated nearly 250 years ago, is to secure our God-given, unalienable rights in order that we might enjoy the pursuit of happiness, the benefits of free enterprise, and the blessings of liberty. Finding the right approach to trade policy is key to the fortunes of everyday Americans. In Chapter 26, president of the Competitive Enterprise Institute Kent Lassman and former White House director of trade and manufacturing policy Peter Navarro debate what an effective conservative trade policy would look like. Lass- man argues that the best trade policy is a humble, limited-government approach that would encourage free trade with all nations. He maintains that aggressive trade policies involve an increased government role that future leftist Administra- tions will utilize to push “climate change” and “equity”-based activism. Focusing more on gross domestic product (GDP) growth than on median income, he writes that “people mistakenly believe that U.S. manufacturing and the U.S. economy are in decline” when in truth “American manufacturing output is currently at an all-time high.” Meanwhile, we continue to experience “record-setting real GDP” despite our “long-run decline in manufacturing employment.” Lassman does not think that an aggressive U.S. trade policy would lead to more manufacturing jobs. Rather, he writes, “Federal Reserve research shows” that the
Introduction
— 655 — Department of Veterans Affairs ENDNOTES 1. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Division, VHA Directive 1003, “VHA Veteran Patient Experience,” April 14, 2020, pp. 1 and B-1. 2. S. 2372, VA Mission Act of 2018, Public Law No. 115-182, 115th Congress, June 6, 2018, https://www.congress. gov/115/plaws/publ182/PLAW-115publ182.pdf (accessed January 30, 2023). 3. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA History Office, “VA History,” last updated May 27, 2021, https://www. va.gov/HISTORY/VA_History/Overview.asp (accessed January 28, 2023). 4. 38 U.S. Code § 1116, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/38/1116 (accessed January 28, 2023). 5. S. 3373, Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act of 2022 (Honoring Our PACT Act of 2022), Public Law No. 117-168, 117th Congress, August 10, 2022, https://www. congress.gov/117/plaws/publ168/PLAW-117publ168.pdf (accessed January 28, 2023). 6. H.R. 2471, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Public Law No. 117-103, 117th Congress, March 15, 2022, Division S, Title I, https://www.congress.gov/117/plaws/publ103/PLAW-117publ103.pdf (accessed March 18, 2023). Known variously as the Department of Veterans Affairs Nurse and Physician Assistant Retention and Income Security Enhancement Act and the VA Nurse and Physician Assistant RAISE Act. 7. See note 5, supra.
Introduction
— 641 — 20 DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS Brooks D. Tucker MISSION STATEMENT The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is the primary provider of health care, benefits, and memorial affairs for America’s veterans and their families. The VA has the noble responsibility to render exceptional and timely support and services with respect, compassion, and competence. The veteran is at the forefront of every VA process and interaction. The VA must continually strive to be recognized as a “best in class,” “Veteran-centric”1 system with an organizational ethos inspired by and accountable to the needs and problems of veterans, not subservient to the parochial preferences of a bureaucracy. OVERVIEW At the end of the Obama Administration, the VA was held in low esteem both by the veterans it served and by the employees who served these former warriors. Eroding morale caused by the downstream effects of a health care access crisis in 2014 led to the resignation of Secretary Eric Shinseki and extensive oversight investigations by Congress from 2015–2016. By 2020, however, the VA had become one of the most respected U.S. agencies. This significant progress was due in part to the leadership of Secretary Robert Wilkie (2018–2021) and his team of political appointees and career senior executives, many of them veterans, who led the effort to ensure that the VA became “Veteran-centric” in its governance decisions and fostered a more positive work environment. This mindset translated into a department that was better attuned to employees’ and veterans’ needs and experiences in the daily operations of health care, benefits, — 642 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise and memorial affairs. During that period, the VA received the largest number of watershed congressional authorizations to reform its health care and benefits that it had received since the post–Vietnam War years along with historic increases in annual appropriations, which have tripled since the last full year of the George W. Bush Administration. The current VA leadership team of Biden appointees has adopted some of their predecessors’ governance processes. However, they have not sustained the previous Administration’s commitment to a genuine “Veteran-centric” philosophy, most nota- bly with respect to the delivery of health care, and harbor a bias toward expanding the unionized federal employee workforce that has not always been aligned with a focus on “Veteran-centric” care. There also is growing concern in Congress and the veteran community that the VA is poorly managing and in some cases disregarding provisions of the VA MISSION [Maintaining Internal Systems and Strengthening Integrated Out- side Networks] Act of 20182 that codify broad access for veterans to non-VA health care providers. Efforts to expand disability benefits to large populations without adequate planning have caused an erosion of veterans’ trust in the VA enterprise. Additionally, the current VA leadership is focusing very publicly on “social equity and inclusion” within departmental policy discussions toward ends that will affect only a small minority of the veterans who use the VA. For the first time, the VA is allowing access to abortion services, a medical procedure unrelated to military service that the VA lacks the legal authority and clinical proficiency to perform. In addition to continuing the grotesque culture of violence against the child in the womb, these sociopolitical initiatives and ideological indoctrinations distract from the department’s core missions. DEPARTMENTAL HISTORY Following the Civil War, state veterans homes were established to provide med- ical and hospital treatment for all injuries and diseases. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, “Congress established a new system of Veterans benefits, including programs for disability compensation, insurance for service personnel and Veterans, and vocational rehabilitation for the disabled”3 that was overseen by three different federal programs: the Veterans Bureau, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Pensions, and the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. In 1921, Congress combined those programs into the Veterans Bureau. Following World War II, a national VA hospital system, much of which remains operational today, was established to care for millions of returning veterans. Following the Vietnam War, the VA’s federally owned and operated hospital network expanded again to meet the needs of the volunteer and draftee population. In the past two decades, the VA has purposely transitioned to leasing medical prop- erties rather than building expensive new facilities that can take years to complete and often experience budget overruns. As the nature of health care has evolved
Showing 3 of 5 policy matches
About These Correlations
Policy matches are calculated using semantic similarity between bill summaries and Project 2025 policy text. A score of 60% or higher indicates meaningful thematic overlap. This does not imply direct causation or intent, but highlights areas where legislation aligns with Project 2025 policy objectives.