U.S. still paying Civil War veterans' families

[The Straight Story]

OLYMPIA, WASH. — If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century.

At the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, more than $40 billion a year are going to compensate veterans and survivors from the Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict.

The Associated Press identified the disability and survivor benefits during an analysis of millions of federal payment records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

To gauge the post-war costs of each conflict, AP looked at four compensation programs that identify recipients by war: disabled veterans; survivors of those who died on active duty or from a service-related disability; low-income wartime vets over age 65 or disabled; and low-income survivors of wartime veterans or their disabled children.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/viewart/20130319/NEWS/303190109/U-S-still-paying-Civil-War-veterans-families?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|Frontpage

[TwilightGardener]

1. Why not just end the survivor's benefits at something like 30 or 50 years post-conflict?

Or when the widow or widower dies or remarries? Seems a pretty simple way to deal with this.

[The Straight Story]

2. Using simple and the government in the same thought process does not computer

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. Actually when widows remarry they lose all kinds of benefits.

The civil war makes zero sense, since they were supposed to stop with children at paying for college, the recent (as in WW2 vintage)

Being the wife of a service member, now veteran, that story smells.

[TwilightGardener]

8. That's what I thought--but then this story makes it sound like the benefits

go on in perpetuity for descendants.

[brewens]

3. The last civil war veterans widow died in 2004. She was 18 in 1920

when she married her husband. A number of elderly veterans did that. They would marry these young girls to help them out and get them the benefits.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-05-31-war-widow_x.htm

[hedda_foil]

4. Does that mean there are surviving Civil War veterans' children receiving benefits?

[Warren Stupidity]

5. Round about paragraph 16 in this steaming turd of an editorial masking as news

Last edited Sun Mar 24, 2013, 04:28 PM - Edit history (1)

We can learn that survivor benefits for civil war veterans amounts to 50,000 dollars a year.

The Austerity Masters would like to stiff vets to keep their astounding tax breaks granted them over the last 30 years. Perhaps we could reduce the cost of veteran benefits instead by not being in a perpetual state of war since wwII? Huh? And by raising taxes back to 1980 levels for millionaires? And by treating all income the same for tax purposes?

Nah, lets stiff the last surviving civil war veteran's children instead.

[The Straight Story]

6. My take away is that wars cost a lot more than we are told

And we should bring it up every time a damned republican wants one and tells us it will pay for itself.

[bhikkhu]

9. Still helping with health and disability issues would be more accurate

if you read the article. I would guess that there will be a variety of responses to this -

The standard "government is stupid and wasteful!" repug rant would probably be most common.

I suppose an alternative is how you feel about government-led disability coverage, or whether you think government-funded healthcare is a good idea.

[The Straight Story]

10. I think the govt here is doing the right thing

But that so many times have done the wrong things which led to wars that caused these costs to be incurred.

War is the govt being stupid and wasteful.