Survivor Benefits Bill Passes Senate 94-2

Senate OKs receipt of both survivor benefits 

The Senate voted 94-2 Wednesday to allow survivors of deceased service members and military retirees to receive full military and veterans survivor benefits concurrently with no offsets, a move that addresses one of the top issues raised by associations representing the interests of active, reserve and retired service members and their families.

The vote came on an amendment offered by Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to the 2009 defense authorization bill. Two Republicans, Sens. Jim Bunning of Kentucky and George Voinovich of Ohio, voted against allowing receipt with no offset of dependency and indemnity compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs and survivor benefits from the Defense Department.

While passage of Nelson’s amendment is a victory for the Military Coalition, a group of more than 30 military-related organizations, it is a small one and possibly hollow.

This is not the first time the Senate has passed a Nelson-sponsored amendment on survivor benefits. The hurdle that sponsors and supporters have been unable to overcome is opposition from the Bush administration and the House of Representatives, which has tougher rules than the Senate about identifying funding to cover the costs of pending legislation.

About 61,000 survivors, mostly widows, are affected by current law that reduces military survivor benefits dollar for dollar by any amount received in veterans’ survivor benefits.

Congress provided some modest relief in the 2008 Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in January.

Beginning Oct. 1, 2008, a new payment, called special survivor indemnity allowance, will pay $50 a month to a surviving spouse or former spouse who is eligible for both DIC and SBP. The $50 allowance is set to increase by $10 a year on Oct. 1 each year through 2012 — and then expire on Feb. 28, 2016.

Nelson called the special survivor indemnity allowance inadequate. “The real offset is about $1,100,” Nelson said. “Fifty dollars is better than zero, but we have a long way to go to make this right by our veterans and their families.”

Nelson’s amendment, if it were to become law, would end the offset on the first day of the month after the defense bill was signed into law but would not allow any retroactive payments.