Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) joined Senators Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) in a new effort to ensure that the Military Widow’s Tax Elimination Act of 2019 will be included in the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The senators sent a bipartisan letter, co-signed by 64 of their Senate colleagues, calling on the chairmen and ranking members of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to ensure the House-passed provisions to repeal the Military Widow’s Tax remain in the final version of the NDAA conference agreement. The final bill is currently being negotiated between the House and the Senate.
“There has never before been more bipartisan support in Congress for repealing the SBP-DIC offset. Currently, there are 75 co-sponsors of legislation to repeal the widow’s tax in the Senate and 371 co-sponsors in the House,” the senators wrote. “We have an obligation to make sure that we are taking care of our military families who have sacrificed so much. This problem goes back decades, but this year we can finally solve it once and for all. It is our time to do our duty not only to support the brave men and women of our military, but also to support their families.”
If signed into law, this legislation will repeal the unfair law that prevents as many as 67,000 surviving military spouses nationwide from receiving their full Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs survivor benefits. Currently, military widows and widowers who qualify for the VA’s Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) are forced to take a dollar-for-dollar offset from the Survivors Benefits Plan (SBP) benefit, even though retirees elected to pay into the program.
A full copy of the letter can be found HERE and below:
Dear Chairman Inhofe, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Reed, and Ranking Member Thornberry:
We write to ask you to include House-passed provisions which repeal the Survivor Benefit Plan – Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (SBP-DIC) offset, the so-called “widow’s tax,” in the final National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 (NDAA) conference agreement. The widow’s tax prevents more than 67,000 surviving spouses of servicemen and women who die of service related causes from receiving the full SBP annuities they deserve.
As a result of the widow’s tax, tens of thousands of surviving spouses are prevented from collecting the full insurance benefits from the Department of Defense for which their military retiree spouses paid because those benefits are offset by the DIC payments they receive from the Department of Veterans Affairs. On average, this offset means that surviving spouses are denied more than $11,000 per year in SBP benefits. In response to this unfairness, thousands of military widows have become grassroots advocates, working in many cases for more than 30 years to right this wrong for their own families and the entire military family community.
There has never before been more bipartisan support in Congress for repealing the SBP-DIC offset. Currently, there are 75 co-sponsors of legislation to repeal the widow’s tax in the Senate and 371 co-sponsors in the House. Numerous military and veterans advocacy groups have joined us in this effort.
We have an obligation to make sure that we are taking care of our military families who have sacrificed so much. This problem goes back decades, but this year we can finally solve it once and for all. It is our time to do our duty not only to support the brave men and women of our military, but also to support their families.
Thank you for your consideration of this request.
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