12-11-15 VFW posted - Women Veterans

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Women Veterans

This week, four state commanders who are women veterans – one from each of the VFW’s four conferences – traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with VA and Department of Labor leadership and congressional staff to discuss ways the federal government is addressing the needs of women veterans. The group is tasked by Commander-in-Chief John A. Biedrzycki, Jr. to identify barriers that are unique to women veterans when they access their earned health care and benefits. Based on these meetings, and the group’s input, National Legislative Service will launch a survey in the coming weeks to gather direct feedback from women veterans, which will assist in developing the VFW priority goals necessary to eliminate any existing barriers.

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Also posted by VFW 12-11-15

VFW Wants “Widow’s Tax” Eliminated

It is a longtime VFW goal to eliminate the dollar-for-dollar offset that denies some 63,000 surviving military spouses from concurrently receiving Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) payments from the Defense Department, and Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) payments from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Similar to life insurance, SBP is purchased by military retirees in order to provide up to 55 percent of their retirement pay to surviving spouses. DIC is a modest indemnity compensation benefit of $1,254 per month that the VA pays to surviving spouses whose loved ones died from a service-connected wound, illness or injury. Despite the two payments being paid for two different reasons from two different federal departments, all monthly SBP retirement payments are first offset by the $1,254 DIC payment. In testimony this week before the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, the VFW called it the ultimate government insult to financially penalize surviving spouses just because their loved ones died on active-duty or from a service-connected wound, illness or injury after they retired.