February 2017
The Honorable Nancy Pelosi Minority Leader U.S. House of Representatives Washington, DC 20515
Dear Representative Pelosi, I am writing to urge your personal intervention on two issues of great importance.
1. Sequestration. The threat of sequestration was supposed to be so terrible it would force legislators to pursue more reasonable deficit-reducing options. But Congress let it become the law of the land.
Two subsequent budget agreements have blunted some of the impact, but the nearly $100 billion already trimmed from the defense budget since 2011 has resulted in forces too small for their mis- sions, aging weapons systems, and rapidly declining readiness. The return of sequestration in FY 2018 will cut another $100 billion from defense over five years — even as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as well as China, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and others pose increasing threats to our national security. This situation is intolerable. As the Army Chief of Staff told Congress in September, “The only thing more expensive than deterrence is actually fighting a war, and the only thing more expensive than fighting a war is losing one.”
Please exert your leadership to avert sequestration and its devastating impact on defense.
2. SBP/DIC Survivors. Every year, 63,000 survivors whose sponsors died from military service are penalized up to $12,000 by a law that requires deducting their VA Dependency and Indemnity Com- pensation (DIC) from their military Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuities. When service causes a servicemember’s death, it’s simply wrong to make a surviving spouse fund their own VA death benefit from the SBP annuity, which was purchased by the servicemember.
Congress recognized this inequity by authorizing a partial rebate: the Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance (SSIA), which has been increased over several years to the current $310 per month. The intent was to continue raising the SSIA and eventually phase out the SBP/DIC offset. But SSIA authority is set to expire June 1, 2018, and the only mandatory spending offsets available to the Armed Services committees would effectively make other beneficiaries pay the bill through options such as far higher pharmacy copayments. Leadership help is essential to find nondefense offsets that acknowledge funding survivor benefits for military-caused deaths is the government’s respon- sibility, not military beneficiaries’.
Please exert your leadership to identify nondefense offsets to further increase the SSIA and continue phasing out the unfair SBP/DIC offset.
Sincerely,
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88
