What’s in Store for VA Disability Benefits with New Office of Management and Budget Chief?
Vought, confirmed Thursday in a 53-47 Senate vote, spearheaded a 2023 report by the Center for Renewing America think tank that called for reducing VA disability compensation for veterans who reach Social Security retirement age and eliminating unemployability benefits for these veterans as well.
The report also proposed cutting disability compensation to veterans with ratings lower than 30% and dropping disability compensation for veterans whose health conditions aren’t directly related to military duty.
Vought also contributed to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a conservative federal government, which recommended the VA revamp its disability ratings schedule to eliminate any conditions that are “tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service.”
Project 2025’s VA section, written by former VA Chief of Staff Brooks Tucker, suggested that the new administration “target significant cost savings from revising disability rating awards for future claimants while preserving them fully or partially for existing” recipients.
While President Donald Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 during his campaign and Collins said in his hearing that he had not read the document, the administration has, in its first three weeks of office, implemented the document’s recommendations on eliminating diversity initiatives, freezing federal funding, and withdrawing from the Paris Climate agreement, among others.
Trump has completed one Center for Renewing America recommendation — signing an executive order that enforces the Hyde Amendment barring the use of federal funds for abortions — and moved to end protections for transgender individuals, also suggested in the document.
Related:
Center for Renewing America – SourceWatch
Funding: Bradley Impact Fund (Bradley Foundation), DonorsTrust (Atlas Network), Goldman Sachs, Schwab Charitable Fund (Charles Schwab Corporation), Young Americans for Liberty (Atlas Network), etc.
Heritage Foundation – SourceWatch
Ties to the Kochtopus, DonorsTrust, State Policy Network, American Legislative Exchange Council, Unification Church.
Funding: Adolph Coors Foundation, Bank of America, Bradley Impact Fund (Bradley Foundation), Charles Koch, Chase Foundation of Virginia, Donors Capital Fund, DonorsTrust, Ed Uihlein Family Foundation (Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein), Fidelity Investments, Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Mercer Family Foundation (Robert Mercer), Motorola Solutions, Sarah Scaife Foundation (Scaife Foundations), Searle Freedom Trust, Shell USA, Snider Foundation (Ed Snider), John M. Olin Foundation, Castle Rock Foundation, Walton Family, etc.
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