CBO

Statement of

Allison Percy

Principal Analyst

Analyzing the Federal Benefits

Available to Disabled Veterans

before the

Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission

May 19, 2006

This document is embargoed until it is delivered at 12:45

p.m. (EDT), Friday, May 19, 2006. The contents may not

be published, transmitted, or otherwise communicated by

any print, broadcast, or electronic media before that time.

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE

SECOND AND D STREETS, S.W.

WASHINGTON, D.C. 20515

Thank you for asking the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to speak before the

Veterans’ Disability Benefits Commission on the issue of analyzing the federal

benefits available to disabled veterans.

The charter of the commission is broad, stating that it “shall carry out a study of

the benefits under the laws of the United States that are provided to compensate

and assist veterans and their survivors for disabilities and deaths attributable to

military service.” The law establishing the commission specifically requests a

“comprehensive evaluation and assessment” of those benefits, including the

appropriateness of the type and level of benefits, as well as the standards for

determining whether a disability or death of a veteran should be compensated.

The commission’s list of approved research topics begins with several questions

about how well current benefits compensate disabled veterans for lost earnings

capacity and an impaired quality of life. Thus, the commission is seeking to

determine the role that federal benefits play in sustaining disabled veterans’

standard of living.

Federal support for disabled veterans’ standard of living will vary because some

veterans are eligible for different benefits both from the Department of Veterans

Affairs (VA) and from other federal sources. To fully assess the impact of federal

benefits, the commission would need to know about all of the federal programs to

which veterans can turn for assistance and would need to quantify the extent to
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which each of those programs provides income and in-kind services for disabled

veterans. Depending on a variety of circumstances, a veteran with a disability

attributable to military service might receive disability retirement or a severance

payment from the Department of Defense; disability compensation and medical

services from VA; disability insurance payments or Supplemental Security

Income from the Social Security Administration; and education loans, job

training, adaptive technology, small business support, and other benefits from a

variety of federal programs. Analyzing the effects of those benefits on a standard

of living is complex because the service-connected disabilities that trigger the

receipt of VA benefits may or may not reflect the same underlying medical

conditions that trigger veterans’ benefits under other federal programs.

In considering the issue of multiple benefits, Social Security Disability Insurance

(SSDI) stands out in particular because it is the largest federal program that, like

VA disability compensation, is designed to replace earnings that are lost because

of a disability. However, the eligibility criteria for the two programs are different,

and there is limited information currently available on the degree to which

veterans receiving VA disability compensation are also receiving SSDI payments

and whether those payments are tied to the same service-connected disabilities or

to disabilities unrelated to military service.

Under current law, a veteran may be eligible for both programs without any

offsets. Collecting new information about the role that each program plays in
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supporting the standard of living of disabled veterans would not necessarily lead

to a conclusion that current law should be changed. It could be that only the most

seriously disabled veterans qualify for both programs and that their loss of income

and quality of life is greater than that of veterans who receive only VA disability

compensation. In that case, the two programs could be seen as complementary

with the common goal of providing greater compensation to the most seriously

disabled veterans. Yet if VA compensation alone is inadequate to restore the

standard of living of veterans whose only disabilities derive from their military

service, it seems inefficient for those veterans to have to undertake two separate

application processes in order to qualify for the full amount of federal benefits to

which they are entitled. Alternatively, veterans who receive both types of

compensation might not differ in any measurable way from veterans who receive

only VA compensation. In that case, issues of fairness might arise, as veterans in

similar circumstances would be receiving different amounts of total compensation

for their service-connected disabilities. The commission can illuminate the issue

for the Congress only by learning more about whether veterans are receiving both

types of compensation and what types of disabilities those veterans have.

As a preliminary analysis conducted by the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) has

shown, federal data sources such as the Current Population Survey and the Survey

of Income and Program Participation provide relatively little information on the

issue beyond a simple count of how many veterans receive both types of
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payments.1 That analysis indicates that about 15 percent of veterans who are

receiving VA disability compensation also receive payments from SSDI.

However, those data do not describe the amount of income the veterans receive

from each source; the extent to which SSDI payments are received by veterans

with service-connected disabilities rated at 100 percent or by those with lowerrated service-connected disabilities who also have additional disabilities unrelated

to their military service; or the likelihood that veterans will receive both types of

payments depending on the type of disability. The research that the commission is

undertaking now has the potential to provide far better information about the role

that SSDI plays in providing income support for some disabled veterans.

CBO is a legislative support agency whose mission is to provide the Congress

with timely, objective, nonpartisan analyses of the budget and the economy and to

furnish the information and cost estimates required for the Congressional budget

process. The agency takes as a premise that the clearest view of any policy

question can best be found by seeking accurate and unbiased data sources and by

examining those data in an objective manner. Consequently, CBO sees only

advantages to learning more about the degree to which the totality of federal

benefits (including SSDI payments) enables veterans with service-connected

disabilities to have a standard of living comparable to that of other veterans.

1. CNA Corporation, “Disabled Veterans Receiving SSDI” (prepared for the Veterans’

Disability Benefits Commission, March 29, 2006).