Career service members earn their retired pay by service alone and those unfortunate enough to suffer a service caused disability in the process should have any VA disability compensation from the VA added to, not subtracted from, their service-earned military retired pay. The proposition made by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to remove the Concurrent Retirement and Disability Pay (CRDP) provision would strip previously earned retirement benefits from hundreds of thousands of retired service members. Veterans are widely regarded as disadvantaged
when looking for post-service employment opportunities, due largely to the military culture and combat related training. Bean counters at the Congressional Budget Office have come up with a
billion-dollar idea to reduce the deficit. Unfortunately, it’s a billion-dollar bad idea, one that could harm nearly 600,000 service members in the process. The CBO, a nonpartisan budget analysis arm within the legislative branch, has pointed out that Congress could save a whopping $139 billion from 2018 to 2026 by doing away with “concurrent receipt.” This practice allows veterans to collect both retirement pay and disability pay at the same time.
Our elected Congressional representatives continue to receive private medical benefits, compensation and other benefits. Let’s ask them why they don’t forfeit some of their private benefits and take government health care, etc. How much would this safe the government?
