{"id":72293,"date":"2017-05-25T10:05:10","date_gmt":"2017-05-25T14:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72293"},"modified":"2017-05-25T10:08:05","modified_gmt":"2017-05-25T14:08:05","slug":"va-plans-to-cut-veteran-disability-payouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=72293","title":{"rendered":"VA plans to cut veteran disability payouts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

According to Military Times<\/a>, the Trump Veterans’ Affairs Department’s 2018 budget includes cutting out compensation for veterans who can’t work because of a disability once they reach the age for collecting Social Security;<\/p>\n

Up to 225,000 veterans over the age of 60, at least 7,000 of whom are over 80, could be impacted by the change.<\/p>\n

Under current rules, the IU program awards payouts at the 100 percent disabled rate to veterans who cannot find work due to service-connected injuries, even if actual rating is less than that.<\/p>\n

Administration officials want to stop those payouts once veterans are eligible for Social Security retirement benefits, arguing those individuals should no longer qualify for unemployment benefits. Veterans who cannot collect Social Security would be exempt. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are always hard decisions that have to be made,\u201d VA Secretary David Shulkin said following a House Veterans\u2019 Affairs Committee budget hearing on Wednesday. \u201cSometimes that means you have to adjust current programs to support the growth of other benefits. That\u2019s what we\u2019re seeing here. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By “growth of other benefits” Shulkin means funneling that cash savings into the Veterans’ Choice program in order to eventually privatize veteran care.<\/p>\n

It’s funny (odd, not ha-ha) how politicians on both sides of the political aisle can only find ways to save federal money by screwing veterans out of the the things they earned. It never appears to be an especially “hard decision”.<\/p>\n

It looks like the VSOs are standing up for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe budget plan unveiled yesterday completely abandons many of the most severely disabled veterans of the Vietnam generation and could make thousands of elderly veterans homeless,\u201d said John Rowan, national president of Vietnam Veterans of America.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re extremely alarmed by this budget proposal, because this is the opposite of what President Trump promised veterans.\u201d<\/p>\n

VVA officials said they spent have spent the last day since the budget announcement fielding panicked calls from veterans dependent on the program, wondering how they\u2019ll make ends meet.<\/p>\n

VFW National Commander Brian Duffy said his membership likes many parts of the budget \u201cwe are absolutely against forcing wounded, ill and injured veterans to pay for improvements elsewhere within the VA.\u201d AMVETS released a statement Wednesday demanding the IU provision be dropped, labeling it “stealing” benefits from veterans. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to Military Times, the Trump Veterans’ Affairs Department’s 2018 budget includes cutting out compensation for … VA plans to cut veteran disability payouts<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72293","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=72293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}