The U.S. Veterans Affairs Office misleaded veterans to pay disability compensation and pensions in about $5 billion over the past four fiscal years. This is the mistaken idea that lawmakers have repeatedly gotten worse.
At Wednesday’s oversight hearing, the House Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs pressed VA officials to explain how they plan to correct issues that regularly create financial nightmares when veterans are asked to repay their money.
“Our veterans live on payroll,” said Rep. Morgan Luttrell of R-Texas, who chairs the subcommittee. “Many of them are in deep, dark, in black holes.”
D-Ky. Representative Morgan McGarvey of the committee visited the VA’s debt management center in February and said, “We met a veteran who was confused, angry and committed suicide.
The VA issued at least $5.1 billion in compensation and pension overpayments from 2021 to 2024, Luttrell said. The VA said it was over-promoted nearly $1.4 billion in 2024 alone.
The VA collected only a “part” of its four-year debt. That means the agency wasted about $677 million in taxpayer dollars.
Agency officials said many factors lead to overpayment, including administrative errors, failures of veterans who did not report any addictions they no longer have, and reporting other changes to eligibility and status.
Ninatan, executive director of VA’s compensation services, said the agency serving around 9.1 million people “has increased the risk” of making inappropriate payments due to many beneficiaries and the high amounts it repeats.
Tan said he took steps to prevent, detect and correct the issue, including better informing veterans that the change needs to be reported.
Tan also said the VA corrected the administrative error in January, when it was causing duplicate payments to roughly 15,000 veterans with dependents in 2024. The agency did not force veterans to pay back the money, she said.
Overpayments can sometimes take years. In 2023, the VA temporarily suspended the collection of pension obligations for thousands of low-income war veterans and their survivors after the agency identified income verification issues that led to overpayments between 2011 and 2022.
Overpayment also prohibits lesser-known federal laws prohibiting veterans from receiving disability compensation and special separation salaries, or temporary incentives provided when the United States had to reduce active duty forces or release slightly injured service members.
Since 2013, the earliest year the VA shared data, the VA has unintentionally reclaimed more than $2.5 billion from around 122,000 disabled veterans who had unintentionally received both benefits, NBC News previously reported.
Luttrell said veterans should not be responsible for correcting government-made errors.
“That’s our fault,” he said. “We need to fix that issue.”
During the almost hourly hearing, no clear path was established, and Luttrell asked Tann to talk to him afterwards.
“Our heartache is the fact that it’s heading in the wrong direction,” Luttrell told agency officials. “We’re losing the ground.”
