OPINION: Veterans should not have to prove poverty to 'qualify' for disability payments

Carroll Davis Jr. is a U.S. Marine Corp veteran and adjutant with the Disabled American Veterans Department of Mississippi. A new budget might change his benefits. (Photo by R. Solis, AP Via DY) 

As Congress searches for ways to pay for the massive tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Congressional Budget Office has proposed cutting disability payments to U.S. Veterans who make too much money. "America is inching toward means-testing for disabled veterans benefits," writes Christy White in her opinion for The Daily Yonder. "We shouldn’t treat our honorably discharged military personnel like beggars."

Current VA guidelines for disability benefits do not consider a veteran's finances. "Benefits are a direct result of a service-related illness or injury," White writes. Means-testing would examine a veteran's "wages and other income to be considered eligible. … If the government determines they have the 'means' to pay for necessities … they don’t get the benefit."

She believes changes to disability payments could upend veteran income and trickle down to economic difficulties for rural regions. White explains, "There are almost five million disabled U.S. military veterans, and roughly two million of them are Appalachian residents. … How many of our kin folk may be affected by harmful means-testing? Encouraging financial success among veterans should be the goal, not penalizing them for achieving it."

White says asking veterans to prove a "lack of means" to receive military disability payments fails to honor the relationship the U.S. government has with its servicemen and women. She writes, "The suggestion that 'wealthier' veterans should not receive full compensation fails to acknowledge the contractual obligation between them and the U.S. Government; that when they sign up to serve, they are told they’ll be taken care of."

Even as the CBO argues that means-testing veterans’ benefits saves taxpayer dollars, it "ignores the fundamental nature of disability compensation — that it is a payment for service-related injuries, not a poverty relief measure," White writes. "Russell Vought is the director of the OMB. . . . [He] believes that disabled veterans should not be compensated for negative health effects caused by exposure to burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan."