{"id":56200,"date":"2014-11-03T11:04:00","date_gmt":"2014-11-03T16:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=56200"},"modified":"2014-11-03T11:05:26","modified_gmt":"2014-11-03T16:05:26","slug":"coburn-says-that-veterans-are-breaking-the-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=56200","title":{"rendered":"Coburn says that Veterans are breaking the system"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republican Senator Tommy Coburn is on a tear again – this time it’s about “triple-dipping” veterans who get a retirement check, a VA disability check and social security. Coburn claims that the weight of the payments to veterans is what is causing the debt, I guess. According to Military.com<\/a>, there are 60,000 veterans who are triple-dipping.<\/p>\n

Some lawmakers say the report shows the need for better coordination among government programs that are facing severe financial constraints. The Social Security Disability Insurance trust fund could run out of money in as soon as two years, government officials say.<\/p>\n

“We should fulfill our promises to the men and women who serve, but we need to streamline these duplicative programs,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., who requested the study.<\/p>\n

Veterans groups disagree. They say the retirement money was earned for years of service in the military, while disability payments are compensation for service-related injuries and wounds.<\/p>\n

In most cases, veterans who receive a combination of benefits are severely disabled. About 4 in 5 veterans who got triple payments had a disability rating of at least 50 percent, the GAO said. Nearly half of those receiving triple payments were at least 60 percent.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, if that such an odious thing, the government should pay back, in lump sum, our contributions to Social Security if collecting Social Security is going to put the program in danger. <\/p>\n

Besides, I call bullshit on paying veterans what they earned. I know a fellow back home who was fired for smoking pot on the job, he was fired and can’t find anyone stupid enough to hire him now – so after a while on unemployment, then on welfare, he’s on SSID, and I’m sure that there are far more of those cases than there are veterans collecting on benefits that they earned.<\/p>\n

Veterans are the easiest to blame for the government’s overspending. For decades, retired veterans paid for their own disability from the VA by reducing our own pensions by the amount that the VA paid us. I didn’t hear anyone stand up for us then, but now, suddenly, were getting enough money to live on and it’s too much.<\/p>\n

The article says that there is someone getting more than $200k in benefits. I’m not thinking that’s an enlisted soldier – but guess what, it’s the enlisted soldiers who make up the bulk of those who will pay the price for this one guy (I’m guessing that he’s a general officer) if Coburn gets his way.<\/p>\n

In the interests of full disclosure, I’m not a triple dipper yet. I earned too much money this year to qualify for Social Security Disability, but I probably will qualify next year. I’m not a six-figure dipper, though, but I’m comfortable.<\/p>\n

Mostly, I’m just tired of veterans being the target of the budget cutters because the politicians don’t have the cojones<\/em> to cut where the real waste lies.<\/p>\n

Thanks to Chief Tango and Chockblock for the links.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Republican Senator Tommy Coburn is on a tear again – this time it’s about “triple-dipping” veterans … Coburn says that Veterans are breaking the system<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56200","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56200\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/56202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}