Terminating entitlements: Veterans' disability benefits in the Depression

A new term, entitlement, has appeared in the federal lexicon with increasing frequency during the last few years. Although in common use, its definition receives little attention in agency glossaries and its impact even less by those who legislate and administer them. This article first considers the pragmatic meaning of the term and then analyzes the difficulty of limiting such benefits once they have been authorized, by examining a short-lived attempt to reduce entitlement benefits for veterans during the era of the Depression. After documenting the social and political conditions which facilitated the entitlement reduction, attention is directed to the process through which political pressure was mobilized and focused in order to force a reversal of congressional action. This historical episode is then compared to an ill-fated, modern-day attempt by DHEW to limit free social service programs under the terms of the Social Security Act.