Veterans Caught Not Breaking The Law?

This is the headline on Washington Times

"Veterans caught triple-dipping on benefits"

Seems really bad right? Nope. This is the part that came further down the article.

"The arrangement is legal"

Few if able, stop working after they retire from the military. That means they pay into their pensions as well as Social Security. Hurt on the job then they get Social Security Disability plus any private insurance they pay for. Granted a service connected disability for what happened while in the military is another thing they paid for with their service.

So why all of a sudden are headlines like this coming out?

Veterans caught triple-dipping on benefits
The Washington Times
By Stephen Dinan
Thursday, October 30, 2014

The arrangement is legal, but it raises questions about the generosity of the American safety net system at a time when disability programs are already under severe financial stress.

One veteran on disability collected nearly $210,000 in benefits in 2013, while another earned more than $122,000 — nearly three times what his actual military pay would have been — according to a watchdog report being released Thursday that found tens of thousands of veterans are triple-dipping on disability.

Tens of thousands of veterans collect their military retirement pay and disability benefits from the Veterans Administration and disability checks from Social Security too, according to a new report from the Government Accountability Office. All told, nearly 60,000 triple dippers collected $3.5 billion in benefits.

“This report shows that, like other government programs, there is little coordination between these overlapping benefits, which increase cost[s] to taxpayers,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who requested the GAO report. “We should fulfill our promises to the men and women who serve, but we need to streamline these duplicative programs.”

For decades, up until 2004, the government clamped down on veterans taking both military retirement pay and VA disability benefits. The Pentagon docked retirement pay dollar for dollar up to the amount of their VA benefits.
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