"earned benefits" is a grammatically correct phrase and can be used in written English.
It refers to benefits that have been earned or deserved through hard work or effort. Example: "After years of dedication and loyalty to the company, John finally received his well-deserved earned benefits, including a generous retirement package and health insurance."
(A spokesman acknowledged that veterans wait "too long for earned benefits," and said, "We have an aggressive plan in place to end the backlog in 2015").
But the Tea Party's rank and file views them as earned benefits that belong to hard-working Americans as surely as do their homes and private savings.
Some United retirees suffered large losses, because the government's pension insurance is limited and many of them had earned benefits above the limits.
The bulk of the exit pay was linked to previously earned benefits and stock since his departure was deemed a retirement; he did not receive any severance pay.
In the past symphony orchestras competed for and retained top talent by promising generous pensions, so musicians with many years in the Philadelphia Orchestra probably have earned benefits above the insurance limit.
There was also – as there almost always has to be – a means-tested safety net to catch those who would otherwise sink, something that compromised the ideal of "earned" benefits.
Thus does bankruptcy law trump miners' supposedly guaranteed, doubtlessly hard-earned benefits.
The other is that they should not pre-emptively reduce hard-earned benefits at the first sign of trouble.
And now, instead of trying to find a way to restore those hard-earned benefits for all workers, politicians like Christie are using corporate America's bad behavior as an excuse to take benefits away from the last set of union members who managed to cling to them — those in the public sector.
Even some of those hard-earned benefits — access to a passenger lounge, expedited through security, even more points — can be paid for and often are for sale in advance or at check-in.
Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid, however, are hard-earned benefits funded, in large part, out of our paychecks.
