The indignity of our military’s ‘widow’s tax’

War is costly. This conclusion is often expressed in terms of lives lost and money spent. But the cost of war is much more complicated than this, especially for nearly 65,000 surviving military spouses.

Their loss might have happened during war or day-to-day operations; their loved one might have died from other service-connected causes. In either case, within a few days of their loss, a surviving spouse is overwhelmed by the inequity of their Survivor Benefits Plan (SBP) annuity and Dependency Indemnity Compensation (DIC), compounded by what is known as the SBP-DIC offset, or “widows tax.”

{mosads}Under current law, survivors eligible for both SBP and DIC must forfeit a dollar of their SBP annuity for every dollar of DIC received from the VA. The offset often entirely wipes out the SBP annuity — an annuity the military retiree paid for out of their retirement pay. In such cases, the survivor receives a proportional refund of SBP premiums, with no interest. No other federal employee’s surviving spouse is required to forfeit his or her federal annuity because military service caused their sponsor’s death.

A separate law, validated by the courts, terminates the SBP-DIC offset for those who remarry at age 57 or older. By absence of any clarification, the law continues to punish survivors who at age 57 or older don’t remarry, by maintaining the SBP-DIC offset. To add to the confusion and inequity, a survivor who remarries before age 55 forfeits both SBP and DIC eligibility.

The SBP-DIC offset became personal to me April 27, 2011 — the day Maj. David Brodeur was killed in Afghanistan when a rogue Afghan colonel entered an operations center in Kabul and summarily killed 10 individuals. Before David’s deployment, my wife and I promised him we would take care of his family while he was deployed, not knowing that promise would become a lifetime commitment. David’s wife, Susie, is the new face of these widows — young, financially challenged, and with the responsibility of raising their two children David left behind.

Congress knows this inequity needs to be fixed. Over the past few years, both the House and the Senate have introduced bills to eliminate the offset. As a mitigating strategy in 2008, Congress authorized a modest Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance (SSIA) for SBP-DIC widows to begin phasing out the offset. The following years saw the same support for this strategy, increasing SSIA monthly payments to $310 in FY 2017. However, time is running out and, barring an additional law change, SSIA expires May 2018.

Solutions are few as the costs seem insurmountable — especially with budget caps and complicated spending rules. Noticeably absent is the political will to find the estimated $9 billion for a complete resolution. Suggested alternatives have surfaced: extend SSIA with a possible modest increase, find a funding offset within the current budget, or raise funds by increasing government health care costs borne by our service members and retirees.

I hope the last option got your attention. There are a few in Congress who believe, because the military is good at taking care of their own, the solution is to have the military pay for the offset by increasing military beneficiaries’ pharmacy copayments. One example says the increase would be only $4 over nine years, but what they fail to include is the entire schedule of increases — up to $41, in some cases, over the same period.

This logic of letting the military take care of its own is flawed at its inception. The nation demands plenty from its service members and their families, and plenty in Congress remain supportive.

The association I lead has consistently championed, on behalf of surviving military spouses across the nation, fixing the financial inequities resulting from the SBP-DIC offset.

It is time for our Congress to weigh in and lead. Less than 1 percent of our country serves in uniform, less than 6 percent have ever served. The solution to this inequity must be borne by all citizens — with the service members sharing in that responsibility, not going it alone.

Lt. Gen. Dana T. Atkins, USAF (Ret) is the president and CEO of Military Officers Association of America (MOAA).