VERIFYING what Project 2025 says about veterans’ benefits

VERIFY has received dozens of questions about what Project 2025, an initiative launched by the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, says about various assistance programs.

Dozens of readers have also asked VERIFY whether Project 2025 calls for cutting veterans’ benefits. Some people have sent us a screenshot of posts that claim to show various Project 2025 proposals, including those that would put an end to veterans receiving retirement pay and disability benefits at the same time and make fewer people eligible for disability benefits. 

THE QUESTION

Does Project 2025 call for cutting veterans’ benefits?

THE SOURCES

THE ANSWER

Project 2025 recommends speeding up the Department of Veterans’ Affairs review process for disability ratings and considering limits on what claims will make future recipients eligible for disability benefits. People who are currently receiving benefits could see a reduction but not a complete cut in payments. 

WHAT WE FOUND

Project 2025 calls for speeding up the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) review process for disability ratings and considering limits on what claims will make future recipients eligible for disability benefits. The VA assigns disability ratings based on the severity of a veteran’s medical condition and uses those ratings to determine how much money a person receives in benefits each month. 

People who are currently receiving benefits could see a reduction but not a complete cut under Project 2025’s proposed changes. 

The Heritage Foundation, which is the group behind the plan, has previously proposed some reductions in veterans’ benefits in the past, independent from Project 2025.

The VA uses what’s called the Veterans Affairs Schedule for Rating Disabilities (VASRD) as its “guide for evaluating the severity of disabilities” related to military service, the Army explains.

"Mandate for Leadership: A Conservative Promise," which outlines the plan for Project 2025, has a chapter on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) written by Brooks Tucker, who served as chief of staff for the VA during the Trump administration.

In that chapter, Tucker writes that the “VA’s Schedule for Rating Disabilities (VASRD) has assigned disability ratings to a growing number of health conditions over time,” some of which are “tenuously or wholly unrelated to military service.” In other words, more medical conditions that have weak ties to a person’s military service or aren’t related at all make a person eligible for disability benefits, he says.

Project 2025 recommends speeding up that review process and considering limits on what claims will qualify future recipients for disability benefits. 

“The next administration should explore how VASRD reviews could be accelerated with clearance from Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to target significant cost savings from revising disability rating awards for future claims while preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants,” Tucker writes in the “Mandate for Leadership.”

In other words, some medical conditions may receive different ratings in the future. That means veterans who file claims in the future could qualify for fewer disability benefits than they would now or no benefits at all. 

A spokesperson for Project 2025 told VERIFY that “under no circumstances does Project 2025 recommend current benefits be cut.” But “it is possible some non-permanent medical conditions would warrant a different rating for future veterans and some conditions would retain their current rating level,” the spokesperson said. 

Other Heritage Foundation proposals for veterans’ benefits 

These proposals are not from Project 2025 but instead come from the Heritage Foundation’s Budget Blueprint for Fiscal Year 2023, which is a separate set of policy recommendations.

One policy proposal that’s part of the Budget Blueprint says the VA should “eliminate concurrent eligibility for both service-related disability benefits and military retirement benefits.” That means veterans would not be eligible to collect military retirement and VA disability benefits at the same time. 

Another proposal says the VA “should not provide medical benefits to veterans” in low priority groups. 

The Budget Blueprint also proposes preventing veterans from receiving disability benefits for “conditions that cannot be related to military service” and limiting “service-related disability claim applications to 10 years after leaving active duty.”