If a veteran died on or after Oct. 1, 2021, we’ll pay a $300 burial allowance and $828 for a plot. The Social Security Department pays a whopping $225 for the funeral (the national average cost of a funeral with viewing in 2020 was $9,150. That cost does not include cemetery service or cemetery property charges.)
The $225 has not increased in 80-plus years. It is time for Congress to get real and act competently. There is not, nor has there ever been, a cost-of-living adjustment attached to the Social Security death benefit. Why?
FEMA states: “If you incurred COVID-19-related funeral expenses for more than one individual, you may receive a maximum of $9,000 per deceased individual and a maximum of $35,500 per application, if you incurred funeral expenses for multiple deceased individuals per state, U.S. territory, or the District of Columbia.” Moneywise, it is much better to die of COVID- 19 than any other disease. Why?
If Social Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs increased their death benefit to $10,000, COLA adjusted, families might be able to give their deceased loved ones a decent burial. Going around the neighborhood with a tin cup should not be how one pays for a funeral.
Here in the RGV and throughout the nation, many of the very poor cannot afford life insurance. Should their families be forced to beg?
You have two U.S. senators and one House representative. Put them to work during this campaign season. Have them increase the Social Security and VA funeral payments to a realistic amount.
Hank Shiver
Mission
Buyer’s
remorse
So many of my Democratic friends are suffering from buyer’s remorse because they hated the “Orange Man,” aka President Donald Trump. They complain about the price of gas, fajitas or beef brisket, because everyone knows next to not messing with Texas, you do not mess with a man’s ability to drive to Padre Island or to barbecue his beloved fajitas or brisket.
Yet here we are. So much for those whose pay increased to $15 per hour; it just got eaten up by the price of gasoline and for those below the $15 pay it is worse.
On the bright side, the Biden people say now we will be able to explore public transportation. Tell that to a farmer in Marfa, who has no access to public transportation and hauls his crops and cattle to the nearest market more than 40 miles away and is now paying double for a gallon of diesel. The American economy is driven by the price of fossil fuels, and anything and everything transported by fossil fuel is going cost more.
In every disaster there is a silver lining: people are starting to wake up and smell the coffee. The Green Deal that is the poster child of Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan is a disaster.
Of course, Biden is now blaming Vladimir Putin for the high prices, but some of
us know people in the oil industry who have been sidelined due to wells being shut down.
Remember last year Biden’s spokes-puppet Jen Psaki called increasing prices and inflation transitory and they are correct — prices will continue to increase for the remainder of Biden’s term, until this transitory administration is voted out of office, because inflation like power is transitory.
Jake Longoria
Mission
