Apparently at the request of Republican Senator Tom Coburn, the Government Accountability Office has done a study of the concurrent receipt of Social Security disability benefits, Veterans benefits and military retirement. Here is an excerpt:
Out of the 1.9 million DOD [Department of Defense] nondisability and disability retirees, we identified 59,251 individuals who received concurrent payments in fiscal year 2013 from DOD retirement, VA disability compensation, and SSDI. The payments totaled over $3.5 billion. From our population of individuals receiving concurrent payments, we also selected a random sample of seven individuals to provide illustrative examples. These seven examples individually received from $19,210 to $152,719 in concurrent benefits.
Build a retirement system, they will come.
ReplyDeleteThis story isn't unusual. I know of one guy who gets 3 retirement pensions. He served 20 yrs (18yo-38yo) in the military, and gets a military retirement pension. He then worked for USPS for 20 years (38yo-58yo), and gets a USPS retirement pension. He then worked for VA hospital for 22 years. He retired from the VA hospital at age 80, and gets an CSRS pension.
ReplyDeleteThe double and triple dipping is frankly disgusting. The law should be changed so that you are only eligible for 1 type of benefit. Va or ssdi. Not both. Period. There is something seriously wrong with a system that pays a 40 y/o a military retirement plus nearly $3k/ month in va benefits plus ssdi. Especially when their combined benefits exceeds their annual salary
ReplyDeleteSomething is seriously wrong, when some want to keep people poor, have these stupid people have no shame? At having Nazi like thoughts? It is disgusting that people don't like people getting something that they won't and can't get, so they whine, like babies, grow up.
ReplyDeleteWe in the USA have a safety net that Repubs/baggers/Nazi followers want to eliminate, cause it's the right and proper thing to have, starving people to death or cutting their checks is criminal behavior, the safety net is 80% White, yet to Repubs/baggers it is not... VOTE BLUE on Tues Nov 4th 2014, I voted BLUE on 10/14/14 by mail.
@9:48, calling minimum mixed up facts. USPS has been covered by civil service retirement. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) administers both USPS retirement programs - the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS).
ReplyDeleteSo not possible to collect a USPS pension and a separate CSRS pension.
LOL The Republican solution to income inequality.
ReplyDeleteTo all those people who want to cut Veteran's Benefits, please serve before you vote. A bill will be passed so that your age or piss poor attitude won't be held against you. Only after you serve can you vote to cut Veteran's benefits. I am not a veteran and my family members never served, but I appreciate the sacrifice that military members and their families make.
ReplyDeleteTo all you people who want to cut everyone else's benefits, what is wrong with you. Have you no sense of compassion for your fellow world travelers. You have my pity. It must suck to be you. Wait until you get old or disabled and see what it is like. I am neither of these things yet, but I have empathy for my fellow citizens.
One of the huge draws for career military members, who can be deployed and sent to war zones at any moment and leave their families for months at a time, is that they know they will someday qualify for a military pension after serving 20 years. Twenty years of working for an entity that controls not just where you work, but also where you live, where your family lives, what you can and cannot do with your body (like getting health care from another place without permission), and sends you into harm's way any time they want. Also, if you are a young enlisted person, your family may be considered low income enough to qualify for food stamps. They serve for two reasons; one is to defend their country and the other is the knowledge that some day they will get a pension, some extra payment for putting up with the job.
ReplyDeleteThen there are others who are injured during their service to the country. I actually think the VA's system is a bit odd, considering why my ex-husband and my son are going to get VA benefits, but both were damaged during their service time - things that happened while they were on duty. Neither of them will qualify for SSDI because both are able to perform SGA, but they still had injuries caused by military time and my ex-husband put up with deployments and time away from family that was not his choice.
It does seem odd that this is coming up now because getting VA, military pay and SSDI has been going on for decades.
@ 9:29 Of course smart people look at the possible pensions or other benefits that are supplied by the employer. When I first went to work for SSA, my sister said "Gee, don't you want to work for yourself?" and I said no. Fast forward 30+ years - I can look forward to a lifetime pension (thank you taxpayers) and my sister thinks she has to work until she dies.
ReplyDeleteAll of us look (or should look) at the costs and benefits of all choices and make our decisions based on that. When I was 28 and realized my income tax would be less if I opened an IRA, I made that choice. I know I would have preferred to spend the money on something else, but the long term benefits outweighed the short term costs. Same with choosing an employer, be it military, government, or private industry.
So what?
ReplyDeletePerhaps I'm operating under a misconception, but I think that there was an offset between VA benefits and SSDI benefits, so one could not get the total amount of each benefit combined. Is this not true? Someone with knowledge of the possibility of offset please comment.
ReplyDelete@12:43pm
ReplyDeleteNo, there is no offset with VA benefits. There is an offset with SSDI and long term disability and workers compensation.
SSDI does not offset for LTD benefits, at least not yet anyway. Rather, the LTD companies offset for SSDI, thus reducing a claimant's LTD check by the amount they receive in SSDI each month.
ReplyDeleteSSDI offsets for WC and other "public benefits", e.g. state disability (CA, NY, RI)
Mr. Coburn, bravo and congratulations. I sincerely hope the rest of the Republican delegation supports your proposal to cut benefits to disabled veterans.
ReplyDeleteYou can proudly call yourselves the anti-veteran and anti-disability party. You can laugh over pictures of your beloved mascot, the Republican elephant, with his long trunk deep in the pocket of a disabled veteran sucking those benefits right back out! You can even come up with some catchy campaign slogans for Veterans Day, like "Fleece our Troops." I'm sure the public will love it.
Once a veteran has established disability with the military and any other Agency, he should not make mor ein benefits than his full time pay while on active duty. Anything above that does a disservice to the tax payers that support these pensions. This is not supposed to be like the lottery. If you are making a significant wage as a soldier and happy with it, why should you get more than that for not working??
ReplyDelete@5:15
ReplyDeleteI disagree on limiting benefits to what people made as wages. People with disabilities sometimes have substantial extra expenses. If you polled the taxpayers on whether they would want to cut benefits for disabled veterans, I think you know what the result would be.
@ 928.
ReplyDeleteif you are a vet, all your med bills are paid by the VA. so what are you these "substantial extra expenses"?
it is criminal that any proposed action to make reasonable reforms to ANYTHING related to the military gets quickly shot down by the frankly insane argument that it's unpatriotic. give me a break.
it's not like the 40s when poor folks were drafted. if you are in the military, you freely signed up. most of those signed up solely for the purpose of getting a free education, and to take advantage of the exorbitant benefits. that's all fine. but to argue that someone who is getting a military retirement PLUS VA disability PLUS SSDI for a combined yearly income that in some cases approaches 80k, if not more??? when their military pay was less than 50k. especially when the majority of these disabilities are "PTSD"? outrageous
@ 9:31
ReplyDeleteI agree 100%. I would also add that are large portion of the veterans getting disability were no "combat" troops. The military hires a LOT of people to cook meals, clean bathrooms, repair engines, answer phones, handle IT, etc. While these people are technically veterans, they are not what the average american pictures when they think of the term "veteran."
As you noted, these people performed a job and were paid for their service. It's crazy that we treat them differently than any other employee at a civilian job.
@9:31 and 10:42
ReplyDeleteMy goodness you just don't understand about the extra expenses people with disabilities face. The medical costs are just the beginning. There's plenty of research out there on the additional costs of living with a disability. Google it if you are interested in understanding the reality of the situation. One example including case studies that will aid your understanding of this issue:
http://www.jrf.org.uk/system/files/1859352375.pdf
I said on her over a year ago this was going to happen, and look, they are going after the disabled vets. But that's OK Colburn is gone so we will here no more of this.
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