Veterans Affairs forces veterans to repay billions given by gov to leave service: Report

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has demanded that veterans repay billions of dollars over the past decade that they were given as incentives to leave service, according to a news report on Friday.

The United States military has offered incentives to service members who were slightly injured on duty, to leave service when it needed to downsize its active-duty forces.

But disabled veterans have had to repay those incentives in order to receive disability compensation, and have repaid at least $2.5 billion collectively so far, according to NBC News.

The repayment orders are because of a little-known law that Congress authorized in 1949, which prohibits veterans from receiving both the separation payout and disability payments.

“It felt like I would never see the light at the end of the tunnel,” Damon Bird, who was forced to repay a $74,000 incentive from the Army, told the outlet. “We were barely keeping up with our day-to-day cost of living. It was already bad enough as it was, but I had already been dealing with mental health issues prior to losing that income."

Bird was diagnosed with service-related bladder cancer, and post-traumatic stress disorder, and was receiving a monthly VA disability check of $2,400 before the VA stopped the payments in 2021 due to the federal law.

The VA said it is legally obligated to recover the separation payouts before they can send those veterans their monthly disability stipend. Approximately $364 million still needs to be recouped.

Veteran advocates are calling for a change to the federal law, and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) introduced a bill in 2022 that would eliminate the disability recoupments. 

“We need a statutory change,” Gallego told NBC News.

The bill has received bipartisan support, Gallego said, but has been slow to pass because of the cost. 

Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.