My Name is Frederick L. Payne,
I am a Chapter 61 medically retired veteran who has given dollar for dollar of military pay to receive VA disability compensation since 1992. Of course, we know that chapter 61 was devised as a cost saving scheme of the government to minimize the amount of retirement and disability compensation to be paid out at the end of the Civil War, a scheme that continued for 138 years Unchecked. The VA and DOD played magic with the Veterans earned military retirement and disability compensation in order to lessen the amount the federal government owed to its nation's veterans after the Civil War.
The old song and dance being it would cost too much money for such an extravagance of giving what had rightly been denied for 138 years. Congress, the DOD, and the VA had a secret pot of money to play with for the 138 years. Every time the subject came up to give Chapter 61 veterans their earned military retirement and VA pension concurrently, a retirement and disability pension earned seperatly, Congress, DOD, and the VA would bring up the budget process and how much it would cost the federal deficit to correct the injustice.
The Congress, DOD, and the VA were telling little white lies, the budget process of DOD includes a line item for retiree pay, an amount DOD knows, and it is a legal appropriation, the budget process of VA includes a line item for Compensation pay, an amount VA knows, and it is a legal appropriation. Now Congress Tells DOD and the VA they cannot pay both Disability and Military Retirement pay concurrently to Chapter 61 veterans without an offset payment from a third Government appropriation stream.
So, let's get this straight, DOD and the VA must appropriate funding under two separate and distinct funding paths to pay for disability compensation and military retirement, then DOD must transfer its retirement appropriation to the VA under chapter 61. There is so many ways for the government to manipulate the two separate funding streams of DOD and VA at the same time to the detriment of this nations disabled veterans.
The Guaranteed Loosers to these schemes are the veterans themselves, Now this little trickery had played out for 138 years for twenty-year retiree's and an additional twenty years and counting for the medically injured and disabled troops forced to retire before twenty years. A question the Veterans should be asking is what happened to the trillions of dollars that were stolen from this country's veterans, what pork projects, special interest funding etc., Let's get a full accounting from the GAO of what happened to the retirement money stolen from the Nation's Veterans since the Civil War, through WW1, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War 1 and 2 and into Afghanistan.
We can afford 10 Trillion dollars or more for illegals, or a couple of trillion in student loan write offs but we cannot afford to quit stealing military pension money from our most disabled and injured veterans. Congress needs to continue to lie to save one of their hidden pots of money off the backs of disabled veterans.
Thank You for fighting, continue the fight, buts lets hit the DOD and the VA with the facts! For every Congressman that says there needs to be a third payment stream ask them what happened to the DOD and VA funding streams. It is a simple matter of the DOD not giving away military retiree's paychecks to the VA and Congress<
Sincerely,
Frederick L. Payne, SSgt USAF (Ret)
100 % Service-Connected Disabled Veteran.
P.S. It would be nice for all 535 Members of Congress to get a copy of this e-mail Along with Presidents Biden and Trump.