Vets groups rally to fight benefits calculation

WASHINGTON -- Veterans groups are rallying to fight any proposal to change disability payments as the federal government attempts to address its long-term debt problem. They say they've sacrificed already.

Government benefits are adjusted according to inflation, and President Barack Obama has endorsed using a slightly different measure of inflation to calculate Social Security benefits. Benefits would still grow but at a slower rate.

Advocates for the nation's 22 million veterans fear that the alternative inflation measure would also apply to disability payments to nearly 4 million veterans as well as pension payments for an additional 500,000 low-income veterans and surviving families.

"I think veterans have already paid their fair share to support this nation," said the American Legion's Louis Celli. "They've paid it in lower wages while serving, they've paid it through their wounds and sacrifices on the battlefield and they're paying it now as they try to recover from those wounds."

Economists generally agree that projected long-term debt increases stemming largely from the growth in federal health care programs pose a threat to the country's economic competitiveness.

Addressing the threat means difficult decisions for lawmakers and pain for many constituents in the decades ahead.

But the veterans' groups point out that their members bore the burden of a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the past month, they've held news conferences on Capitol Hill and raised the issue in meetings with lawmakers and their staffs.

They'll be closely watching the unveiling of the president's budget next month to see whether he continues to recommend the change.

Obama and others support changing the benefit calculations to a variation of the Consumer Price Index, a measure called "chained CPI." Conventional CPI measures changes in retail prices of a constant marketbasket of goods and services. Chained CPI considers changes in the quantity of goods purchased as well as the prices.

If the price of steak goes up, for example, many consumers will buy more chicken, a cheaper alternative, rather than just buying less steak or going without meat.

Supporters argue that chained CPI is a truer indication of inflation because it measures changes in consumer behavior. It also tends to rise less than the conventional CPI, which would impact how cost-of-living raises are computed.

Under the current inflation update, monthly disability and pension payments increased 1.7 percent this year. Under chained CPI, those payments would have increased 1.4 percent.

The Congressional Budget Office projects that moving to chained CPI would trim the deficit by nearly $340 billion over the next decade.

For a veteran with no dependents who has a 60 percent disability rating, the use of chained CPI this year would have lowered his or her payments by $3 a month.