washingtonscene
vantageous position than the servicemem- ber. Closing this loophole is important to preserve protections intended by Congress when USERRA was enacted. At a press conference before the commit- tee hearing, MOAA Deputy Director of Gov- ernment Relations Lt. Col. (select) Aniela Szymanski, USMCR, thanked Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) for their leadership in standing up for guardmembers and reservists. “As a currently serving reservist, I am intimately familiar with the challenges of balancing a reserve and civilian career,” Szymanski said. “I can attest through my own experiences and those of [MOAA] members that these actions by employers cause enormous strain on the ability of members to stay in the Reserve and Guard because they are faced with an almost impossible decision of serving their country versus feeding their family.”
Military Widows
and Drugs Just say “no” to funding via a copayment hike.
T
here’s a link between military survivors and drugs, and it in- volves abuse. But it’s about abuse
of the survivors, not the drugs. We’ve talked before about the military “widows tax” — the unfair situation in which mili- tary survivors whose sponsors died from a service-related cause are made to forfeit up to $1,000 a month or more because current law requires deduction of VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) from the Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) coverage purchased by most military members retir- ing from a service career. Congress acknowledged the unfairness of the situation in 2007 and authorized
32 MILITARY OFFICER SEPTEMBER 2016
a partial rebate called the Special Survi- vor Indemnity Allowance (SSIA), which started out at only $50 a month but has been increased to $270 a month for this year and will rise to $310 a month as of Oct. 1. The intent expressed by the House Armed Services Committee at the time was to continue raising the SSIA until the widows tax was erased. But funding was a problem back then, as it is now. To keep the cost down, the SSIA law was set to expire Oct. 1, 2018 — with the full expectation future Con- gresses would find additional funds to keep increasing it. As expected, both the House and Sen- ate included provisions in the FY 2017 defense bill to prevent the SSIA from ex- piring. But they didn’t increase the $310 monthly amount. The House approved a one-year exten- sion at the same level, buying another year to come up with a funding offset in a way that doesn’t force any benefit tradeoffs. The Senate change would make the SSIA permanent at the $310 monthly amount and fund the permanent extension by roughly doubling TRICARE pharmacy copayments over the next nine years (including raising the copayment for mail-order generic medi- cations from the current zero to $11 per pre- scription, starting in 2020). While MOAA is grateful neither chamber let the SSIA expire, we’re not thrilled with either choice. MOAA recognizes it’s difficult for the Armed Services committees to fund SSIA increases because of congressional rules that require them to find offsets by making other cuts in personnel benefit programs. So MOAA and The Military Coalition
are asking top Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate to help identify offsets outside the Armed Services committees’ purview so the SSIA can con- tinue to be increased in coming years.
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