{"id":146037,"date":"2023-08-20T09:15:36","date_gmt":"2023-08-20T13:15:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=146037"},"modified":"2023-08-19T11:55:10","modified_gmt":"2023-08-19T15:55:10","slug":"veterans-should-keep-military-retirement-pay-and-va-disability-compensation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=146037","title":{"rendered":"Veterans should keep military retirement pay and VA disability compensation"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Representative Gus Bilirakis, Republican from Florida, provided an opinion article for The Hill. He addressed the pay offset that many veterans face when receiving both military retirement pay and VA disability compensation. Currently, veterans with 20 years of service and who are rated at least 50% for VA disability compensation, can collect both without offset. However, others face a dollar for dollar offset. Bilirakis argued the concept that all veterans receiving both should not have to be subject to the dollar for dollar offset.<\/p>\n

From The Hill:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

When service members retire from the military, they are entitled to both retired pay from the Department of Defense and disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) if they were injured while in the service. Unfortunately, only military retirees with at least 20 years of service and a disability rating of at least 50 percent are able to collect both benefits at the same time. Current law requires a dollar-for-dollar offset of these two benefits for all other retired veterans. This means they have to forfeit a portion of the benefits they earned in service.<\/p>\n

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that fixing this terrible injustice would cost less than $10 billion over the next 10 years. That sounds like a substantial amount of money, but when it is put into perspective, the United States spent more than $2 trillion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, $75 billion on the war in Ukraine, and $12.5 billion on funding the United Nations last year alone. Honoring our commitment to fully fund the benefits promised to our nation’s heroes who were medically retired during combat would cost a fraction of these other costs of war.<\/p>\n

National defense is such a vital federal function, it appears in the preamble of the Constitution. In addition, Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution mentions defense related powers at least seven times. If the federal government sends a citizen to war, we are honor bound and bound by our founding charter to care for the war fighter.<\/p>\n

The trillions of dollars spent outside of the four corners of the Constitution are where we should look to make cuts. But to wring our hands over providing for those who personified the “common defense” and were wounded in that service, is something that should not sit right with any American.<\/p>\n

I am a strong fiscal conservative who believes we must address the serious national security threat posed by our growing federal debt and rising debt service obligations; however, it is unconscionable to abrogate a contractual AND moral obligation that the U.S. government has with injured veterans who have already sacrificed so much to keep our nation safe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Hill provides the balance of the story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Representative Gus Bilirakis, Republican from Florida, provided an opinion article for The Hill. He addressed the … Veterans should keep military retirement pay and VA disability compensation<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[654,459,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed","category-retired-issues","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146037\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}