Virginia, with nearly 800,000 veterans—better than 1-in-10 of the state’s population—trails 48 states in compensation to its disabled veterans, according to an analysis released this week by the Chicago Sun-Times. Disabled veterans in the Commonwealth receive, on average, $6978 in annual disability pay. Only Ohio, at $6860, kept Virginia veterans from being dead last in the nation.
According to the report, disability pay nationally averages better than $8000. Puerto Rico leads the nation, with $11,422, followed by New Mexico. Even U. S. veterans in the Phillipines—with annual compensation of $9971—fare far better than Virginia’s disabled veterans.
Regionally, disabled veterans in North Carolina receive $8750; in Tennessee, $8295; in West Virginia $10,373; in South Carolina, $8056.
The disclosures are sure to inflame criticism of the Bush Administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), which revealed a $1 billion funding shortfall earlier this year, will likely set the state’s congressional delegation to scrambling in search of corrective action , and may become a key point of contention in the run-up to Virginia’s election of a new governor and a new House of Delegates in November.
And well it should. There is no excuse—none—for this kind of discrepancy in how disabled veterans are treated state-to-state across the nation.
