What if Veterans Started their Own Funding to Supplement Benefits Shortfalls?

What does an economic downturn mean to American veterans?  What can we do about it to protect our interests?

by CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)

First, let me state plainly, I am not completely sure how to answer my own question. It is obvious that many of us, especially the totally disabled, depend upon our pension monies to live. And pensions can only be collected from the General Revenue Fund which in turn depends upon tax revenue which in turn depends upon people being employed so that they can be taxed in the first place. In other words, a bad economy would reasonably mean that increases in benefits for veterans would be shortlived at best. If the general citizenry has less and less money to place into the General Revenue Fund via taxation, we have less money available to meet our needs. Now, I would like to float an idea.

What if veterans themselves started a sort of federally protected mutual fund into which we placed our investments? That is to say, what if we were allowed to create a sort of “municipal bond fund” on a national level that we could invest in like any other mutual fund that would help defray the costs of supporting us in the upcoming lean years?

We are not going to get much of an increase in needed benefits for the foreseeable future. The money is not there. What if we put if there? If we invested into a sort of bond that was created specifically to help finance our needed increases it would offset the effect of small or no increases in the benefits we will recieve in the next five to ten years. It will probably take at least that long to turn this economy back into the black ink column in the macroeconomic ledger again.

I imagine that it could be set up in several different ways; perhaps like a mortgage or perhaps like a Savings Bond or perhaps like a common mutual fund or perhaps like municipal bond fund. But however it would be set up, it would allow veterans and disabled veterans to invest in a financial instrument where the returns were used in toto for their benefit alone. The monies earned would never be allowed under law to be used for anything other than supplementing veteran’s benefits and disabled veteran’s pensions.

Now, I am not sure of exactly how this would be set up or what legal obstacles would have to be overcome or how it would be administered. It seems to me that a Savings Bond kind of situation would probably be the easiest way to do this but I am not conversant enough with the realities of high finance to really know that for sure. It would be nice if the “powers that be” in Washington D.C. could look into this for us and float a plan to the major veteran’s organizations in setting this up.