Research - Rehabilitation - Re-Employment

Sgt. Shaft 01/26/2004

Dear Sgt Shaft
This is an issue that can be complicated to explain, so please overlook anything I may inadvertently leave out. I have always believed that this issue is gender connected, since most survivors are women. If my husband had lived, he would collect his military pension, his social security and any other pension that he may have earned after military service. However, when he died, I became entitled to approximately one half of his 55% of his military pay. Since he died on active duty, I also was given the DIC payment of about $850 per month. Then I found out that the DIC is subtracted from the half of the military retirement which I receive. I also learned that I will be compelled to take Social Security at age 62 and my 55% of the retirement will be reduced to 35%. Also, the Social Security will be "offset" by the retirement. In other words, I cannot collect both the Social Security and the retirement. My complaint with that is that both my husband and I have paid into Social Security all of our adult lives. He also earned his retirement with 25 years of service.

What this accomplishes is that any widow who is attempting to live on these benefits will be guaranteed to live at poverty level. It isn't right for all the servicemen who gave their lives in the belief that their families would be protected financially. According to Social Security, it is the military that mandates all these rules, not them. No other widows are treated this way. A government employee's widow can collect both the retirement and the Social Security.

By my less than accurate calculations of life expectancy tables and so on, I estimate that the military saves about a half million dollars when a retirement eligible soldier dies on active duty. When my husband died, I had two boys in college and suddenly had an income of $22,000 a year. I got a job, but after moving every two or three years for 25 years, I didn't exactly have a "career" position. I was lucky and was able to make it work, but others are not so lucky. Those are the people who I truly worry about.

Please let me know if you think anything can be done and how it might start.
 

Thanks for listening.
Kathy D,

Dear Kathy,
Hopefully highlighting your and the following letter in my column will reenergize legislation to rectify this gross inequity. Read on.

Dear Sgt Shaft:
When Congress returns to work in Washington later this month, we’ll be asking them for help on our top legislative goal for this year. In plain talk, we will be pressing Congress to do away with the big reduction in benefits in the military Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) for surviving spouses when they reach age 62. We also call this the widows’ tax.

SBP is the only way a military retiree can pass on a portion of his or her retirement to survivors. The problem is that when SBP-covered surviving spouses reach age 62, they see a one-third drop in their monthly SBP benefit (from 55% of retired pay to 35%). This “tax” in many cases forces negative life style changes on widows who did nothing more than get one year older. Some are forced to sell their homes or go without a car and this isn’t right.

Reducing the SBP benefit at age 62 for military retirees is wrong for three reasons. First, many older retirees weren’t aware this would happen when they signed up for the program and election forms at the time made no mention of the reduction in benefits. Second, the government is not paying its share of costs intended by Congress when SBP came into being in 1972. The cost share was supposed to be 40 percent but has dropped to 19 percent. Third, federal civilian retirees have a better SBP that provides their survivors 50 to 55 percent of retired pay for life, with no reduction at age 62.

This problem with SBP affects 250,000 survivors and over 1.2 million military retirees enrolled in SBP – three times the number impacted by concurrent receipt (reduced retirement pay for receiving military retired pay and VA disability pay concurrently). And it would cost only a fraction as much to fix. Hopefully, the hundreds of legislators who agree we need to fix concurrent receipt will also see the importance of fixing SBP.

While we have been fighting to address this unfair widows’ tax for years, other even broader issues—such as TRICARE For Life, TRICARE Senior Pharmacy, and others, have risen to the top. Now it’s time for SBP and the elimination of the widow’s tax to be the top focus, and it couldn’t happen at a better time. It’s election year.

We are fortunate to have Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Rep Jeff Miller (R-FL) as bipartisan champions in Congress and sponsors of legislation to raise the SBP benefit.

But it will take a lot more to win this fight. Your readers can help by contacting their congressional representatives. It could well be their wife, sister, or mother that has money taken away. With our armed forces fully engaged in the war on terrorism, we are sure that no legislator from either party wants to go home and tell voters that he or she supports current laws that take money from deserving widows and widowers.

Sincerely,
VAdm Norb Ryan, Jr., USN (Ret)
President Military Officers Association of America

Send letters to Sgt. Shaft, c/o John Fales, P.O. Box 65900, Washington, D.C. 20035-5900; fax to 301-622-3330; call 202-462-4430 or email sgtshaft@bavf.org.

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