The Government Is Still Paying Veteran Benefits for Wars Over a Century Old

Meet Irene Triplett. She's an 84-year-old resident of Wilkesboro, North Carolina, and the last living person to receive veteran's benefits from the American Civil War...a war that ended nearly a century and a half ago. And according to a recent feature in The Wall Street Journal, she's actually one of the many people that the United States government pays veteran benefits to for wars that have been over for over a hundred years or more.

You see, Triplett is the child of a Civil War veteran. She’s also receiving a monthly pension of $73.13 a month from the Department of Military Affairs. Triplett’s father Mose Triplett fought for both sides of the War Between the States. He originally joined the Confederate forces, before deserting and choosing to align himself with the Union. In the 1920s, Mose married a woman fifty years his junior. Irene was a product of this marriage. And since benefits for Veteran can continue to their children past their eighteenth birthday if they are proven to have mental disabilities, such as is the case for Triplett, she continues to receive support from the government.

It might seem mind-boggling that the U.S. government — usually so reluctant to hand over any money (at least that’s how it seems come tax season) — would continue to dole out benefits to a war over a century old. But Triplett actually finds herself in good company: The American government continues to give out benefits to 16 widows and children of veterans of the Spanish-American War, a conflict that ended in 1898. And although the last living World War I veteran passed away in 2011 (93 years after that war ended), over 4,038 widows and children are still receiving monthly government payments due to the service of their family members.

But that doesn’t mean that the families of more recently lost veterans are left out in the cold. According to The Journal, the families of “deceased veterans from World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan received $6.7 billion in the 2013 fiscal year.” Compared to that astonishing sum, Triplett’s $877.56 a year barely makes a dent in the annual finances. And these benefits don’t factor in the real cost of war.

“Those payments don’t include the costs of fighting or caring for the veterans themselves,” explained the The Journal article, which then cited a Harvard study from last year that estimated the final bill for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would cost Americans $4 trillion to $6 trillion over the next 20 years.

[Pic via Wikimedia Commons - Thure de Thulstrup]