What’s the point of shielding THIS program from scrutiny? Aren’t you just validating Dinsdale’s original point in #25 (“any questioning of benefits to presumably disabled vet’s gets little traction”)?
The amount spent on disability benefits for veterans now exceeds the amount spent on VA medical care ($80 billion in FY 2016, versus expenditures of $63 billion for the Veterans Health Administration). It’s larger than SNAP (food stamps–$75 billion), and twice as much as the feds spend on all K-12 education ($40 billion). As recently as 2000, the government spent only about $20 billion on VA disability benefits, meaning the program has quadrupled in spending in less than two decades. Given current and projected federal budget issues, that’s not a sustainable rate of increase.