I heard about such crazy arrangements before in the interview with the author of this book https://www.hoover.org/research/high-cost-good-intentions-history-us-

I heard about such crazy arrangements before in the interview with the author of this book https://www.hoover.org/research/high-cost-good-intentions-history-us-federal-entitlement-programs https://www.hoover.org/research/high-cost-good-intentions-hi.... He did a good job studying the history of Federal entitlements stemming from the Civil War and how that select targeting of veterans slowly and steadily expanded with the years. There was this interesting entitlement creep if you will. If I recall correctly it started with soldiers who died in battle to leave a pension or something behind for their widows. Then some soldiers close to that qualification got the next dibs, those who were wounded I believe, and eventually it became everyone who served in the Civil War, and kept creeping to descendants of soldiers or something along those lines. Pretty nuts, but does capture well that aspect of human nature.