The United States must honor its solemn obligation to care for its veterans despite renewed calls to curtail veterans disability benefits, a senior official at one of the largest U.S. veterans service organizations told Task & Purpose.
“If our government wants to continue to send us to war, they need to consider the cost of the long-term, back-end impacts of combat,” said Mario Marquez, the American Legion’s executive director of government affairs, in an interview during a media event in Arlington, Virginia on Friday. “And so, as veterans who have served and fought in our nation’s wars, we will always have a voice in any conversation that comes after benefits that have been rightfully earned and fought for.”
A Nov. 28 article in The Economist, which attacked veterans’ disability benefits as “absurdly generous,” has raised concerns in the veteran community that their compensation for service-connected injuries and illnesses could be at risk. The Washington Post’s editorial board argued last year in favor of decreasing veterans benefits, and Trump has picked one of the major players behind Project 2025 — a policy blueprint for the incoming administration that claimed that a growing number of health conditions that qualify for Veterans Affairs disability compensation are “tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service” — to oversee government spending.
Trump’s incoming administration has several important priorities including focusing on responsible spending, getting the budget in order, and revitalizing the American defense industrial base, Marquez said.
“So, the American Legion wants to be a part of the discussion,” Marquez said. “We’re not going to shy away from the conversation, but what we do not support is taking away veterans benefits.”
For Fiscal Year 2025, the Department of Veterans Affairs requested a budget of $369.3 billion. The proposed budget includes $184.3 billion for disability compensation payments to nearly 6.9 million veterans and their survivors, according to the VA’s budget rollout.
By comparison, the VA had a $53.5 billion budget in Fiscal Year 2001, which ended just weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In its article, The Economist wrote that the jump in the VA’s budget coincides with the total population of American veterans declining from about 26 million to roughly 18 million since 2000, and that means the VA is spending six times as much per veteran.
But that increase also represents the human cost of more than two decades of continuous wars, Dan Clare, a spokesman for Disabled American Veterans, told Task & Purpose previously.
“We’ve seen the VA budget increase, like everyone else has, and we fought for that because we’ve been at war for 20 years,” Clare said. “We’ve had tons of people sacrifice tremendously for their country in that period of time. Some of the illnesses and injuries don’t come to [the] surface right away.”
Indeed, not all service-connected health conditions that veterans suffer from emerge immediately, said Marquez, who noted that he was exposed to toxins from burn pits during his several combat deployments.
“I’m waiting for something to happen to me,” Marquez said, “It’s a matter of time, not if.”
In August 2022, Congress passed the PACT ACT, which established 23 health conditions linked to toxic substance exposure during military service and expanded care for Vietnam veterans who are ill due to Agent Orange. Since then, more than 1 million veterans who were exposed to toxins and their survivors have received $6.8 billion in benefits, according to the VA.
Marquez warned that it is a “dangerous idea” to suggest taking away disability benefits from veterans who have already been awarded compensation, adding that opportunities for the U.S. government to save money lie elsewhere. Any attempts to reduce veterans benefits would be met with strong opposition from the American Legion and other veteran service organizations, Marquez added
“We will fight for what has been earned, but we will not have [a] reduction in benefits,” Marquez said. “It is not acceptable.”