Veterans fume after VA partially blames them for overpayments it claws back [View all]
Source: NBC News
June 1, 2025, 7:01 AM EDT
Christopher Praino signed a waiver relinquishing his disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs after he was ordered to active duty in fall 2019. In a letter, the VA confirmed it would terminate his roughly $965 monthly payments because, by law, he could not receive both VA benefits and active-duty pay at the same time.
But the agency did not fully halt the payments. Instead, it sent various monthly amounts over the next three years, ranging from $0 to over $2,000, Praino’s records show. “The VA never stopped,” he said, “after response after response, call after call, walk-in after walk-in.”
In 2023, despite Praino’s repeated efforts to rectify the inconsistent installments that should have ended years ago, the VA informed him in a letter that he owed nearly $68,000. That year, the government began automatically clawing some of the money out of his military paychecks, which he uses to support five children and his wife, leaving him in dire financial straits. “No words can tell you the emotional, mental and physical heartache I have every day dealing with this,” he said. “It’s eating away at me.”
In a recent congressional oversight hearing focused on why the VA regularly overpays veterans and then asks for the money back, agency officials partially blamed veterans for the exorbitant errors, telling lawmakers that some veterans have been failing to report eligibility changes that would have lowered their monthly disability compensation or pension payments. But Praino and two other veterans told NBC News they did notify the VA in a timely manner. Yet, records show the agency continued overpaying them for months, sometimes years, before asking for the money back.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/veterans-fume-va-partially-blames-overpayments-claws-back-rcna207961
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