Republicans Cut $57 Billion From Future Veterans on Veterans Day

Photo: Aaron Burden via Unsplash

On Veterans Day, of all days, House Republicans passed a bill that cuts $57 billion from the disability benefits of future veterans. They did it by voice vote, in seconds, with no roll call and no recorded names. The bill is H.R. 9237, called the Take Care of Americas Veterans Act, and you cannot make this up... the name says care while the fine print takes money away from people who served.

Rep. Mark Takano, the top Democrat on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, said it plainly. House Republicans just passed the largest cut to veterans benefits in the nations history, and they did it on Veterans Day. The cut comes from changes to the VA disability rating schedule written into the bill, aimed at future claimants. In plain English... veterans who get hurt from here on out will be paid less for the same injuries, so Washington can call the bill paid for.

The voice vote is the part that should make every voter furious. A roll call would have put every members name next to this cut forever. A voice vote lets the whole thing pass on a shout, with nobody on the record. Takano noted that Democrats are ready to pass the clean Major Richard Star Act on its own, the measure that lets combat injured retirees collect both their full military retirement pay and their VA disability compensation. That clean bill does not need a $57 billion cut attached to it to work.

Veterans groups saw the tradeoff for what it is. The Veterans of Foreign Wars has called this approach the biggest net reduction in veterans benefits since the Great Depression, and Disabled American Veterans has opposed using future disability pay as the piggy bank. When the organizations that speak for veterans are warning you in writing, pushing the bill through anyway on the one holiday set aside to honor veterans is a choice, and it says everything.

Why it matters is not complicated. Disability benefits are not a bonus. They are the country keeping a promise to people whose bodies and minds carry the cost of wars this country sent them to fight. Cutting what future veterans will receive, quietly, on Veterans Day, while waving flags in public, is the exact kind of two faced politics Americans are sick of. Support the troops has to mean the check clears after they come home.

What happens next is the Senate, and then the voters. The bill now moves over, and every senator should be forced to vote on the record, by name, in daylight. Democrats should keep pushing the clean Star Act and make Republicans explain, on camera, why helping one group of veterans required taking $57 billion from the next group. The veterans who stand to lose did not get a vote on that House floor. They gave this country everything they had, and this cut has to be stopped before it becomes law.

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