Senate Veterans Affairs Committee Hearing Called After Washington Post Launches Vicious Broadside Against Disabled Veterans and Their Families
- Matthew Feehan
- 7 days ago
- 9 min read
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, on October 29, 2025, the United States Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs convened a hearing titled “Putting Veterans First: Is the Current VA Disability System Keeping Its Promise?” at 4:00 p.m. in Room G50 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The session brought together key voices including the Honorable Cheryl Mason, Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; Elizabeth Curda, Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security Issues at the Government Accountability Office; representatives from Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars; and Dr. Daniel M. Gade, Ph.D., Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.), to examine whether the veterans’ disability compensation system is fulfilling its promise to disabled service members and their families.
Democratic Senator Ladda Tammy Duckworth of Illinois expressed disappointment that the hearing—and the underlying radical proposal to establish a commission on disability compensation—was convened largely in response to a Washington Post investigative series. Duckworth criticized the premise of allowing a newspaper “owned by billionaires” to shape the national conversation on veterans’ benefits, particularly when those same critics target a fixed-income disability program that provides, essentially, pennies compared to the fortunes of their corporate patrons. Her remarks underscored a growing frustration among lawmakers and advocates who view the Post’s framing as an attack on disabled veterans and a distortion of the realities faced by those living on VA compensation—frustration shared by many in the veterans’ community, including Combat Veterans of America, which issued a formal statement in response. CVA's Sergeant-at-Arms wrote an opinion piece too.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: While both the creation of a commission—and the potential reduction of disability compensation from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)—were discussed by Senator Tommy Tuberville and Dr. Daniel M. Gade, Ph.D., Lieutenant Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret.), it’s important for readers to understand the context. The idea of forming a commission is serious, yes—but the process is lengthy, complex, and its findings are not immediately binding. Any formal change to disability benefits would require bipartisan legislation and adherence to the strict regulatory safeguards of the Administrative Procedure Act. In other words, your VA disability benefits are safe. Notably, the Veterans of Foreign Wars cautioned against establishing such a commission—and had I been on the Hill today, I would have opposed it as well. Bottom line: these are just discussions, but they are also important.
The hearing kicked off with a bang as nearly every witness—and every member of the Senate in attendance—uniformly condemned The Washington Post’s insinuation that veterans and their families across the nation are fraudsters. With the federal government still in shutdown due to partisan gridlock—an issue that Senators Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) and Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) referenced during their brief partisan banter—it was striking to see Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, Liberals, and Conservatives alike speak with one unified voice in rejecting sensationalist journalism and denouncing the Post's blatantly libelous attacks on the nation’s backbone: its veterans community.
Echoing the same hyperbolic rhetoric advanced by The Washington Post and addressing Vietnam veterans' claims of hypertension, Dr. Daniel M. Gade (a disabled veteran himself) stated, “old fat people get hypertension . . . under a cloak of virtue” when responding to Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), who had asked the witness panel whether a commission on VA disability compensation was necessary. In what Senator Duckworth later characterized as Gade’s version of “tough love,” Gade went on to remark, with a note of casual sexism, that “men get so much of their identity from their work.”
The sexist implication—that male veterans receiving disability compensation alone—as opposed to working full-time—suffer an identity crisis of their own making—was both unfounded and offensive. Maybe female veterans don't suffer from identity crises because their collective identity is not tied to working full-time, implied by Gade.
His testimony, as Gade himself admitted at the outset, consisted almost entirely of personal opinion and anecdotal experience. As an example, he claimed that during military separation, service members spend “half a day” on workforce training but a “full day” learning how to file for VA disability—an assertion presented without data or supporting evidence. With no scientific foundation beyond his self-directed Independence Project and his book Wounding Warriors, Gade’s testimony exemplified the troubling ease with which subjective narratives can be mistaken for empirical fact in congressional discussions about veterans’ lives—narratives that Senators Tuberville and Blackburn appeared to rely upon heavily.
Notably, Gade's 'solution' to the imaginary and greatly exaggerated 'problem' is twofold:
Reduce disability compensation; and
Put disabled veterans to work, including "the triple amputee" as he put it.
Done deal: Apparently, the solution to our nation’s ballooning federal deficit is simple—stop giving money to disabled male veterans and send them back to work. At least, that’s the logic advanced by Dr. Daniel M. Gade and echoed by the Washington Post owned by Jeff Bezos—seen here vacationing aboard his $500 million superyacht, Koru, off the coast of Mallorca, Spain. (Yes, the same Jeff Bezos whose company recently laid off 14,000 Amazon employees.)
Further, Gade's written proposal to reform the VA disability compensation system includes:
Treat but do not compensate for non-disabling conditions and eliminate
conditions caused by genetics, aging, or lifestyle from the compensation rolls.
Sleep apnea is one obvious example; there are hundreds of others (citing both himself ("Examples of VA-rated “disabilities” that result in no functional incapacity are legion:"; Holder, K. A. (2016, January)). The disability of veterans. U.S. Census Bureau, Social, Economic, and Housing Statistics Division. https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2016/demo/acs-31.html; and himself again ("For example, vitiligo, sinusitis, unspecified knee pain, erectile dysfunction, female arousal disorder, and many more conditions, including eczema, hay fever, acne, and tinnitus (as reported by The Washington Post) are good targets for treatment or therapy or treatment, not compensation.") NOTE: he cited the Post's article, same one that spurred the Hearing, which Senator Duckworth was not shy to call out (who financed this? time will tell). Gade is of the quite unique belief that "isolation from the labor market" is the root cause of disabled veterans' issues.
Require active treatment for compensated mental health conditions. If
compensation is warranted, so is care.
Extend VA medical eligibility for all service-related conditions without tying it to
disability ratings, removing incentives for false claims.
The documents submitted by Dr. Daniel M. Gade to the United States Senate explicitly call for the reduction of VA disability compensation. In his testimony and supporting materials, Gade urges Congress to establish a commission tasked with cutting existing disability payments and redefining eligibility standards for veterans currently receiving benefits. His rationale, consistent with arguments made in his book Wounding Warriors, frames long-term disability compensation as a source of “dependency” rather than earned support—suggesting that veterans should be pushed toward workforce “rehabilitation,” even at the expense of losing their benefits.
Readers of CVA’s Inside the Wire can access the full documents below:
Where were the Rational Voices on the Hill?
Fret not. Anyone worried about losing their disability benefits because of the testimony of a lone political activist—one very likely backed by corporate interests to advance a radical agenda before the U.S. Senate—should take heart. Three voices stood firmly in defense of disabled veterans and their families: Jeremy Villanueva, Associate Legislative Director of the Paralyzed Veterans of America; Jon Retzer, Deputy National Legislative Director of Disabled American Veterans; and Ryan Gallucci, Executive Director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States. Each performed exceptionally in their advocacy roles on the Hill, warning lawmakers of the grave risks of oversimplifying what is, in reality, a highly complex legal, regulatory, and policy-driven system of veteran support.
All three VSO witnesses responded unequivocally to Senator Duckworth’s question about whether there is widespread fraud within the Veterans Benefits Administration. Their collective answer was clear and emphatic: “No.”
“Fraud is an exception; it is not systemic.” — Jeremy Villanueva, Associate Legislative Director, Paralyzed Veterans of America. Villanueva, alongside the VFW and DAV, fielded questions by Senators firmly.
“Over 70% of the conditions cited by the Post are rated and compensated at 0%,” explained Ryan Gallucci, Executive Director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
This was an extraordinarily important clarification—one that exposes the depth of misunderstanding in the Washington Post’s reporting. Gallucci highlighted a key regulatory nuance that the Post either overlooked or chose to ignore: under 38 C.F.R. Part 4, the VA Schedule for Rating Disabilities (VASRD), a 0% rating still acknowledges a service-connected condition, even though it provides no monthly compensation. Veterans with 0% ratings remain eligible for crucial benefits such as healthcare, vocational rehabilitation, and priority access to VA services.
In other words, the Post’s narrative inflated statistics by conflating “rated” conditions with “compensated” ones—an error that fundamentally distorted public understanding of how the disability system works. Gallucci’s testimony effectively corrected the Congressional record, which had become polluted with hyperbole, personal anecdotes, and outright inaccuracies. His intervention restored the focus to evidence and regulation—where it belongs.
“VSO accreditation, as determined by the VA, is not an exempt function,” noted Jon Retzer, Deputy National Legislative Director of Disabled American Veterans.
Another brilliant catch by DAV. Retzer underscored a critical but largely unnoticed reality of the ongoing government shutdown: although the Department of Veterans Affairs has determined that Board of Veterans’ Appeals operations will continue, the accreditation of Veterans Service Organization (VSO) representatives—the very individuals who file claims and represent veterans before the VA—has been suspended as a non-exempt function under federal shutdown protocols.
In practical terms, this means that while appeals may technically move forward, the veterans who rely on newly accredited representatives are temporarily left without authorized advocacy. Retzer’s testimony illuminated the bureaucratic ripple effects of the shutdown—how a technical classification buried deep in VA’s administrative guidance can have direct, immediate consequences for veterans seeking representation.
Reclaiming the Narrative: Veterans Are Not the Problem
Targeting a disabled veteran with erectile dysfunction, acne, or foot-fungus is not going to solve our national debt problem. Yet that’s the absurd premise underlying both The Washington Post’s coverage and Dr. Daniel M. Gade’s testimony: that veterans’ benefits are an unsustainable drain rather than a sacred obligation. The truth is simpler and far less convenient for their narrative—veterans are not the problem.
The VA disability system is one of the most tightly regulated compensation frameworks in the federal government, governed by 38 C.F.R. Part 4 (federal regulation) and the statutory mandates of Title 38 of the U.S. Code (federal law). Dr. Gade’s proposal to replace these definitions with those used by the Social Security Administration would not simplify anything—it would be the equivalent of taking a wrecking ball to decades of carefully developed case law and administrative precedent. The two systems were built for entirely different purposes, serve distinct populations, and operate under separate statutory authorities, funding structures, and missions. Attempting to merge them would create chaos, not reform, while undermining the very principles Congress designed to recognize and compensate service-connected disabilities.
It is, quite frankly, a ludicrous proposal—one that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how federal law and regulation actually work. As the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) rightly emphasized, discussions of this magnitude require the voices of those who understand the intricate legal and administrative frameworks that govern the VA. No serious practitioner of federal law or policymaking would ever conflate the Veterans Affairs disability system with that of the Social Security Administration. The suggestion is not only ill-informed but dangerously dismissive of the decades of statutory and regulatory development that protect veterans’ rights today.
Every VA disability claim is documented, reviewed, rated, and—when necessary—appealed, often multiple times. Fraud within this system is statistically rare, a fact acknowledged by The Honorable Cheryl Mason, Inspector General of the Department of Veterans Affairs. When fraud does occur, punishment is swift and oversight is constant. As Inspector General Mason confirmed to Senator Duckworth, her staff of approximately 1,000 professionals is fully capable of handling the limited number of fraud cases referred from the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). The ludicrous notion that there are “millions” of fraudulent claims for Mason and the Department of Justice to pursue is simply untrue. The record is clear: the VA’s challenges are administrative—not moral—and certainly not rooted in widespread deceit among the veterans it serves.
If nothing else, this unnecessary hearing made that clear.
From Senator Duckworth’s pointed rebuke to the testimony of Dr. Daniel M. Gade—her former fellow patient at Walter Reed Medical Center—to statements from Paralyzed Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and corroboration from both the VA Inspector General and the GAO, the U.S. Senate heard one message repeated again and again: veterans do not need to be “reformed,” “rehabilitated,” or “re-evaluated” by billionaires and political theorists—they need to be trusted, supported, and respected.
About the Author
Matthew Feehan, J.D. is a U.S. Army National Guard veteran and former infantry officer with more than a decade of combined military, legal, and federal contracting experience. A former Department of Justice Honors Law Clerk and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Law Clerk and Operations Officer, Feehan has served across nearly every corner of the federal system—as a contractor, civil servant, and soldier—working on matters that span regulatory policy, administrative law, and complex federal procurement. His firsthand experience navigating the same statutes and rulemaking processes that govern veterans’ benefits gives his writing a uniquely practical edge.
Today, Feehan serves as a Senior Policy Advisor with the Veterans Education Project (VEP), a Board Member and Sergeant-at-Arms of Combat Veterans of America (CVA), and an independent consultant specializing in ethics, compliance, and veterans’ policy. His work explores how law and regulation collide with the lived experience of those who serve—bridging the gap between policy intent and on-the-ground impact for veterans, families, and the public institutions charged with supporting them.
