Proposal to end VA disability

From the CBO they are proposing to reduce the number of veterans receiving disability from roughly 5 million service members to 1.5 million.

Hit full retirement, cut disability and just give you social security. LOL like it will be there for many of us if we live that long.

CBO.gov

CBO.gov

CBO.gov

This option consists of two alternatives. Under the first, VA would stop making IU payments to veterans age 67 or older (the full retirement age for Social Security benefits for those born after 1959). That restriction would apply to both current and prospective recipients. When veterans reach age 67, all VA disability payments would revert to the amount associated with the rated disability level; veterans age 67 or older who are already receiving IU payments would no longer receive them after the effective date of the option. Under the second alternative, veterans who began receiving the IU supplement after December 2023 would no longer receive those payments once they reached age 67, and no new applicants age 67 or older would be eligible for IU benefits after that date. Veterans who are currently receiving IU payments and who would reach age 67 or older after the effective date of the option would continue to collect the IU supplement.

And since the economy is strong as .... a fart in a whirl wind...

Veterans with medical conditions or injuries that occurred or worsened during active-duty service receive disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). By law, VA's disability ratings (the basis for disability payments) are to be based, as far as practicable, on the average earnings that veterans would be expected to lose given the severity of their service-connected medical conditions or injuries. Those ratings do not depend on whether a particular veteran's conditions reduced the person's earnings. Disability compensation is not means-tested: Veterans who work are eligible for benefits, and most working-age veterans who receive such compensation are employed. After veterans reach Social Security's full retirement age, VA's disability payments continue at the same level. By contrast, the income that people receive from Social Security or private pensions after they retire usually is less than their earnings from wages and salary before retirement.

Under this option, veterans who start receiving disability compensation payments in 2024 or later would have those payments reduced by 30 percent at age 67. (Social Security's full retirement age is 67 for people born after 1959.) Social Security and pension benefits would be unaffected by this option. Veterans who are already collecting disability compensation would see no reduction in their VA disability benefits when they reached age 67.

Doing well...(gross income not net) well screw you hippy you lose.

Under this option, spending for certain large mandatory programs without dedicated trust funds would be reduced. Specifically, this option would reduce spending on the two components of such spending that are projected to be the largest over the 2023–2032 period: disability compensation paid by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and income security programs. For VA disability compensation, the reduction would be achieved by applying a means test to VA disability payments (that is, by limiting eligibility for households with higher income). For income security programs, this option would involve a 15 percent reduction in spending that could be achieved in different ways. Refundable tax credits and unemployment compensation would not be affected.

I am so angry right now I dont dare put my true feelings into text.

All because the democrats cant stop spending like a drunken sailor in Tai land after a year at sea.

Thanks people that thought a mentally defunct old man was better than mean tweets.

What really chaps my back side, it will save like 250 billion over 10 years, while the clown show dems are proposing a nearly 7 trillion dollar budget.

fricking pennies, but yea sure lets push vets into suicide even faster.

Forgot to mention angry cops has a video up today and does a much better breakdown.

a reply to: Irishhaf

I would never in a MILLION years recommend a young person join the military, it is ALL LIES.

I saw first hand how my dad a 30 year vet was treated during sickness and the end of his life.

LIVE your life free, don’t fall for the LIES!


What lies you ask..

Lets go way back when they GAVE GI’s cigarettes because they were GOOD for you.
Or when they PROMISED lifelong health, dental and life insurance.
They altered both dental and life. Health care so bad you wish you didn’t have it.

a reply to: JAGStorm

we call it tri-tocare, or medical hobby shop.

Most gis I know will wait till they have to be sent off base for dental to avoid that horror show.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Got to cut the 'earned" entitlements in order to keep foreign aid, welfare, and government spending going.

Veterans benefits, retirement accounts and Social security are the targets.

See what is happening in France?

VA should be transferred to Military Command.

It is proven that civilian operations cannot function because there is so much profit to be made at the expense of the Veterans.

The Military damaged the veterans ... the Military should look after them. Currently serving military would care greatly because at some stage in their lives, they may need the service.

P

a reply to: infolurker

yea, lotta guys and gals out there depend on this stuff to survive.

Take that away and ugly will be a tame word I think, we will either see a huge spike in suicides... or well after fighting an insurgency for years I am sure desperate people that understand the process will do desperate things.

I dont condone it or encourage it, but wont be surprised if it happens.

a reply to: Irishhaf

It looks like the "means testing" is on hold, at least for now.


VA Secretary Swats Down Idea to Cut VA Disability Pay for Wealthier Vets

www.yahoo.com...

Veterans' social media feeds erupted this week over a months-old report from the Congressional Budget Office that listed options for reducing the federal deficit, including the idea that the government could save $253 billion over the next 10 years by eliminating disability compensation for veterans who make more than $170,000.

Each year, the CBO publishes proposals for reducing the federal deficit, which has reached nearly $723 billion since the beginning of fiscal 2023. The latest list, published in December but only garnering attention among veterans this week, called for means-testing for veterans with higher income levels.

But Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough shot down the idea on Thursday, saying the VA does not "think that's a good idea."

"We think it's a bad idea, and we're not going to do it. You have my commitment that we won't do it," McDonough said during a press conference with reporters in Washington, D.C.

a reply to: infolurker

the biggest problem is we just arent a big enough voting block to get the attention, and from training and experience we just dont complain loud enough.

On a personal note I am happy that its on hold for the moment, my career change has seen my income raise dramatically, and seeing proposed cuts freaks me out because I have about 5 years left and I will be on the back surgery rotation till I die.

Targeting veterans is a seriously bad idea. Seriously...

Let's try this...

1. Train many thousands of Americans to be the best killing machines on the planet.

2. Send them to war after war, fighting at the whims of the government that trained them to kill.

3. Bring them home broken...

4. Screw them over.

This will not end well.

Sod their own ex-servicemen they've got to get the money got 'plucky little ' Ukrainian Nazis from somewhere.

I understand it's on hold so I won't comment.
But I would like to know the names of the Congress people who thought of this crazy idea.

They had better not even think about cutting Veteran's benefits! You ever hear about the Million Man March? How about a Multimillion Trained Man (and Woman) March. It will get ugly.

a reply to: Irishhaf


Those that cut will be on the .....list.

a reply to: madmac5150

Targeting veterans is a seriously bad idea. Seriously... Let's try this... 1. Train many thousands of Americans to be the best killing machines on the planet. 2. Send them to war after war, fighting at the whims of the government that trained them to kill. 3. Bring them home broken... 4. Screw them over. This will not end well.

They’ve been doing it for decades. Soo many veterans vote for politicians that absolutely do NOT have their best interests yet they keep voting them in then wonder why they are treated like crap.

You know who I’m talking about too. Republicans AND Democrats!!!! Yes under both administrations soldiers are used and abused like pawns. They are sent to to die on foreign land, get terrible diseases, if by chance they make it home in one piece many times their mind is damaged. If by some chance they come back in one piece with mind and body healthy, don’t worry, all those chemicals take a long time to take hold, soon parkinsons or other illnesses will get ya and the military will play dumb….

They literally said to my face that my dads parkinsons wouldn’t be covered by the military disability because he didn’t have it (YES PARKINSONS) when they drafted him at 19…… Nevermind that he was exposed to Agent Orange, or was forced to handle solvents, and all other manner of chemicals, nevermind he was in places soaked with poisons, nevermind he was given DDT to spray barracks, nevermind he was in asbestos ridden offices, living quarters, I could go on all dang day.

It still hurts my heart to see what my dad gave and what he went through, in severe pain for so many years.
That pain was nothing compared to how the military treated him.

Maybe someone should counter with a proposal that politician have term limits , no trading , no medical , and no pension for life … nothing … when that are done , they have to go back to work in the public .

So men and women who did what they were ordered to do by their President and their country and were disabled in the process are to be thrown away like a used tissue?

Sounds like the new morality being foisted on all of us. Full term unborn babies with a healthy "uterus owner" can be trashed like a used tissue covered in buggers, the new morality. A new morality we are all being forced to accept - or else!

People disabled who were injured on orders of the nation and their President, can have their promised benefits thrown away like these people are used tissues left over from a bloody nose. Sounds about right for the Biden Administration.

Canada is going full blown new liberal morality with euthanasia being suggested to sick people who can't wait the time it would take (months/year) to get their "free" medical treatment. Are you too sick to wait for universal health care? We'll help you die and toss you in the pile of used tissue, that's all people are after all a bunch of tissue.

Human life means nothing in the new liberal morality that we are all to accept without question and are told we aren't woke and are harmful to society if we do believe human life has worth. Only the collective society of humans has value and that value is far less than the value of Gaia, mother earth, because humans are a blight and infection upon the earth in the new morality we are being forced to embrace.

Have a drug problem? The solution, allow you to camp homeless out of compassion on city streets like LA, San Fran, Portland etc. Give you free needles. The feds open the borders wide to drug cartels who lace the drugs with killing fentanyl. The government solution, the compassionate liberal new morality. Do everything you can to help drug addicts die quickly and nothing to help them. They are just used nose tissue in the new morality.

Now veterans are no more than used snot tissue to the CBO - this fits the Biden administrations idea of how to handle problems. Throw away inconvenient, useless eater humans while attempting to look like you are problem solving, the humans in need. Very new modern morality of the left when it comes to "inconvenient, nonproductive" human life and human beings.

I'm not very familiar with the CBO, so tried to find out a little more about it. Turns out the CBO was created as a gov agency by none other than one of my least favorite presidents, R. M. Nixon-you know, the guy who changed the law that hospitals weren't allowed to be run as a 'for profit' business.

History
Founded in 1974, The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the United States government that provides budget and economic information to Congress. The Congressional Budget Office is nonpartisan and produces “independent analyses of budgetary and economic issues to support the Congressional budget process.” Each year, the agency releases reports and cost estimates for proposed legislation without issuing any policy recommendations. The CBO was created as a nonpartisan agency by the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974.

The CBO is an agency of the federal government and funded by the government through the U.S. budget.

[mediabiasfactcheck.com...]

Apparently, it costs $47 million to run the CGB with its 257 employees, and their job is to offer non-partisan information to congress for their consideration in creating fiscal year budgets.

On March 28, 2022, the Administration submitted its annual set of budgetary proposals to the Congress. In this report, the Congressional Budget Office examines how those proposals, if enacted, would affect budgetary outcomes in relation to CBO’s most recent baseline budget projections. Those projections extend from 2022 to 2032 and reflect the assumption that current laws governing federal spending and revenues will generally remain in place. CBO’s baseline budget projections and its analysis of the President’s proposals are based on the agency’s economic forecast published in May that reflects developments through early March.

[www.cbo.gov...]

So, the GBO passes on the information they gather to the sitting POTUS with several options for each sector and their analysis of what the outcome might be, and the POTUS then passes it on to congress for perusal.

It will be telling to see how hard-or even if-congress fights against funding proposals.

Like it or not, safety net programs for citizens MUST be cut in order to support Ukraine, 'refugees', bank and USPS bailouts (again) and so many other critical areas that need funding far more than the citizens that are picking up the tab.

For once I did something with this I rarely do, I actually wrote to congress critters and presidential candidates will it accomplish anything probably not, but its better than sitting on my thumb and hoping.

I am not worried about ending up on a list, I already am on a list I am a disabled vet multiple administrations have classified us as future domestic terrorists.


I can probably survive if me and the wife lose our disability benefits, but it will be strictly paycheck to paycheck living and zero chance to get out of debt.

Update:

Odd that shortly after the secretary of the VA says we would never do that (even though congress controls his budget not him), apparently the Washington post published an opinion piece about why it's a good idea to apply means testing to VA disability.

Seems odd to me and some others, angry cops has another video on it, you can Google the post article.

Make sure your congress critters know you are aware, they usually don't have the spine to stand up to the people when they are aware

This declaration is pandering to an angry and bitter elite, for whom any and all benefits or subsidies to veterans are considered "a freebie," an "undeserved and draining doling out of money."

When I was injured in the service, and my envisioned future was destroyed; I balked at becoming "one of those people."

I spent agonizing decades, trying and failing (by my standards) to provide for my family... I even tried working 'for myself' and couldn't "power through" the disabilities.

Being a "service-connect disabled veteran" and knowing as I do that my 'support' from the VA is a laughable pittance, I wonder who it is their are expecting screw over to "save money."

Interesting in this scenario that the VA and government are so keen to identify "me" as a burden.

Ironically, or maybe comically, I always consoled myself that at least I have VA for some support, that mys service may not have enriched in wealth, but did secure some semblance of a future.....turns out VA healthcare is the epitome of disengaged pseudo-care ever devised, a caricature of the 'promised benefit;' my VA benefit for disability is barely enough to feed my family for a few days... less than a week.

But eliminating that support from my budget will save the country? And people will characterize and rationalize it away as if it had been or is a 'waste?"

My inner child is pissed off.

From the Iranian hostages crisis to the Gulf War do-over, and everything in between, conflicts and 'actions,' I never expected to be considered by the VA as an unsustainable burden. A 'target' for elimination...

Were I someone else, I would follow up with a clear demonstration of the waste and abuse they OUGHT to be targeting to eliminate... contracts and 6-figurede executives... 'special' relationships with NGO's ... but nah... who would actually listen?