Veterans Fight Changes To Disability
Payments
By KEVIN FREKING 03/30/13 10:59 AM
ET EDT
WASHINGTON — Veterans groups are
rallying to fight any proposal to change disability
payments as the federal government attempts to
address its long-term debt problem. They say they've
sacrificed already.
Government benefits are adjusted
according to inflation, and President Barack Obama
has endorsed using a slightly different measure of
inflation to calculate Social Security benefits.
Benefits would still grow but at a slower rate.
Advocates for the nation's 22
million veterans fear that the alternative inflation
measure would also apply to disability payments to
nearly 4 million veterans as well as pension
payments for an additional 500,000 low-income
veterans and surviving families.
"I think veterans have already paid
their fair share to support this nation," said the
American Legion's Louis Celli. "They've paid it in
lower wages while serving, they've paid it through
their wounds and sacrifices on the battlefield and
they're paying it now as they try to recover from
those wounds."
Economists generally agree that
projected long-term debt increases stemming largely
from the growth in federal health care programs pose
a threat to the country's economic competitiveness.
Addressing the threat means difficult decisions for
lawmakers and pain for many constituents in the
decades ahead.
But the veterans' groups point out
that their members bore the burden of a decade of
war in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past month,
they've held news conferences on Capitol Hill and
raised the issue in meetings with lawmakers and
their staffs. They'll be closely watching the
unveiling of the president's budget next month to
see whether he continues to recommend the change.
Obama and others support changing
the benefit calculations to a variation of the
Consumer Price Index, a measure called "chained
CPI." The conventional CPI measures changes in
retail prices of a constant marketbasket of goods
and services. Chained CPI considers changes in the
quantity of goods purchased as well as the prices of
those goods. If the price of steak goes up, for
example, many consumers will buy more chicken, a
cheaper alternative to steak, rather than buying
less steak or going without meat.
Supporters argue that chained CPI is
a truer indication of inflation because it measures
changes in consumer behavior. It also tends to be
less than the conventional CPI, which would impact
how cost-of-living raises are computed.
Under the current inflation update,
monthly disability and pension payments increased
1.7 percent this year. Under chained CPI, those
payments would have increased 1.4 percent.
The Congressional Budget Office
projects that moving to chained CPI would trim the
deficit by nearly $340 billion over the next decade.
About two-thirds of the deficit closing would come
from less spending and the other third would come
from additional revenue because of adjustments that
tax brackets would undergo.
Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow in
economic studies at The Brookings Institution, a
Washington-based think tank, said she understands
why veterans, senior citizens and others have come
out against the change, but she believes it's
necessary.
"We are in an era where benefits are
going to be reduced and revenues are going to rise.
There's just no way around that. We're on an
unsustainable fiscal course," Sawhill said. "Dealing
with it is going to be painful, and the American
public has not yet accepted that. As long as every
group keeps saying, `I need a carve-out, I need an
exception,' this is not going to work."
Sawhill argued that making changes
now will actually make it easier for veterans in the
long run.
"The longer we wait to make these
changes, the worse the hole we'll be in and the more
draconian the cuts will have to be," she said.
That's not the way Sen. Bernie
Sanders sees it. The chairman of the Senate
Committee on Veterans' Affairs said he recently
warned Obama that every veterans group he knows of
has come out strongly against changing the benefit
calculations for disability benefits and pensions by
using chained CPI.
"I don't believe the American people
want to see our budget balanced on the backs of
disabled veterans. It's especially absurd for the
White House, which has been quite generous in terms
of funding for the VA," said Sanders, I-Vt. "Why
they now want to do this, I just don't understand."
Sanders succeeded in getting the
Senate to approve an amendment last week against
changing how the cost-of-living increases are
calculated, but the vote was largely symbolic.
Lawmakers would still have a decision to make if
moving to chained CPI were to be included as part of
a bargain on taxes and spending.
Sanders' counterpart on the House
side, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., the chairman of the
House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, appears at
least open to the idea of going to chained CPI.
"My first priority is ensuring that
America's more than 20 million veterans receive the
care and benefits they have earned, but with a
national debt fast approaching $17 trillion,
Washington's fiscal irresponsibility may threaten
the very provision of veterans' benefits," Miller
said. "Achieving a balanced budget and reducing our
national debt will help us keep the promises America
has made to those who have worn the uniform, and I
am committed to working with Democrats and
Republicans to do just that."
Marshall Archer, 30, a former Marine
Corps corporal who served two stints in Iraq, has a
unique perspective about the impact of slowing the
growth of veterans' benefits. He collects disability
payments to compensate him for damaged knees and
shoulders as well as post-traumatic stress disorder.
He also works as a veterans' liaison for the city of
Portland, Maine, helping some 200 low-income
veterans find housing.
Archer notes that on a personal
level, the reduction in future disability payments
would also be accompanied down the road by a smaller
Social Security check when he retires. That means he
would take a double hit to his income.
"We all volunteered to serve, so we
all volunteered to sacrifice," he said. "I don't
believe that you should ever ask those who have
already volunteered to sacrifice to then sacrifice
again."
That said, Archer indicated he would
be willing to "chip in" if he believes that everyone
is required to give as well.
He said he's more worried about the
veterans he's trying to help find a place to sleep.
About a third of his clients rely on VA pension
payments averaging just over $1,000 a month. He said
their VA pension allows them to pay rent, heat their
home and buy groceries, but that's about it.
"This policy, if it ever went into
effect, would actually place those already in
poverty in even more poverty," Archer said.
The changes that would occur by
using the slower inflation calculation seem modest
at first. For a veteran with no dependents who has a
60 percent disability rating, the use of chained CPI
this year would have lowered the veteran's monthly
payments by $3 a month. Instead of getting $1,026 a
month, the veteran would have received $1,023.
Raymond Kelly, legislative director
for Veterans of Foreign Wars, acknowledged that
veterans would see little change in their income
during the first few years of the change. But even a
$36 hit over the course of a year is "huge" for many
of the disabled veterans living on the edge, he
said.
The amount lost over time becomes
more substantial as the years go by. Sanders said
that a veteran with a 100 percent disability rating
who begins getting payments at age 30 would see
their annual payments trimmed by more than $2,300 a
year when they turn 55.
