Veteran Bursts The Bubble On Smooth-Sailing 'Unanimous' Veterans' Benefits Senate Bill

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/11/2026) What brought Rep. Jaime Greene (R-Richmond) to testify to the House Appropriations Committee Wednesday morning was her TikTok feed.

She said she was scrolling through the live-stream section of the app when she noticed people explaining how they can help veterans access their disability benefits, providing a link that would guarantee an increase in their disability benefits.

As a veteran and former veteran service officer for St. Clair County, she was alarmed. What worried her is the lack of oversight for unaccredited service organizations that help veterans receive their benefits.

This is why she testified in support of SB 215, which passed unanimously last June. She wasn't alone in her support. In fact, representatives all seemed to be on board, likely predicting another unanimous vote in the future.

“What's not really taken care of is the unaccredited side,” Greene told the committee, referring to individuals who help veterans navigate the federal benefits system without formal approval from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “At the end of the day, we still need guardrails around it."

The legislation would amend Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act to regulate those providers, requiring written compensation agreements and limiting fees to no more than five times the amount of a veteran’s one-month increase in benefits.

Though the overall atmosphere of the committee seemed to be emblematic of the Senate's unanimous vote during the testimony, things changed when Derek Blumke, representing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, testified that the bill could conflict with federal law governing how veterans’ disability claims are handled.

He told lawmakers that federal statute already prohibits unaccredited individuals from acting as representatives in disability claims and bars fees from being collected before an initial decision is issued by the Department of Veterans Wars. And because of that, he argued, the bill could effectively legitimize an industry that federal law considers illegal.

Blumke also noted that on Feb. 11, a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana struck down a similar law, ruling that it conflicted with federal statutes governing who may represent veterans in disability claims. According to the decision, state laws allowing companies to charge veterans for assistance risk interfering with Congress’ goal of ensuring veterans work with accredited representatives when pursuing benefits.

He apologized to Sen. Sylvia Santana (D-Detroit), who sponsored the Senate bill and Co-Chair Matt Maddock (R-Milford) because “they certainly weren't expecting this conversation this morning," acknowledging that he knows the intent was only to help veterans.

Because the committee was pressed for time, Chair Ann Bollin (R-Brighton) suggested Blumke was going to have conversations with Santana to figure this out. Blumke is just now speaking up because he said he had just found out about this hearing this week.

“The plot thickens,” Maddock said.