Political Quotes

“I rise today with my colleague from Alabama, Senator Jones, to urge our colleagues' support for our amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act. It would repeal the Survivor Benefit Plan and dependency indemnity compensation offset, more commonly known as the military widow's tax. This unfair offset is currently preventing as many as 65,000 surviving military spouses--more than 260 of them in the State of Maine--from receiving the full benefits they deserve. The Defense Department's Survivor Benefit Plan, or SBP, is primarily an insurance benefit that military families purchase in their retirement. It provides cash benefits to a surviving spouse or other eligible recipients when a retiree passes away. On the other hand, the Department of Veterans Affairs dependency and indemnity compensation, known as DIC, is a monthly, tax-free payment to survivors and dependents of servicemembers who pass away from service-related conditions. For example, if a military retiree pays premiums into the SBP insurance program, then his or her spouse ought to be able to receive those benefits when the retiree passes away. What we find instead, however, is that surviving spouses receiving these insurance payments have a dollar-for-dollar offset for the separate payments they are receiving from the VA. In some cases, this leads to the total elimination of the Survivor Benefit Plan benefit. In other cases, the offset greatly reduces the benefit.…”