Service Member Benefits Education

Floor Speech

Mr. NELSON of Florida. Mr. President, I want to share a story I heard about retired MSG Michelle Fitz-Henry.

Michelle served our Nation for over 20 years. Her husband, Senior Chief Petty Officer Ted Fitz-Henry, was a Navy SEAL who served our Nation for 21 years.

Michelle told me that before her husband left home for the Middle East they went into the living room. He said to her, you know if anything happens to me, SBP is there for you.

When he said SBP, he was referring to the Survivor Benefit Plan, an annuity that the Department of Defense (DOD) pays to survivors--the widows and orphans--of two groups of servicemembers.

The first group of survivors includes those who lost a loved one serving on active duty.

In 2001, Congress passed a law allowing active duty servicemembers who are not eligible for retirement to be included in the SBP program. The SBP program provides the survivors of these fallen heroes with a monthly payment based upon the age of the spouse and the year the servicemember entered the service.

This was the right thing to do. It showed the Nation's gratitude for servicemembers' sacrifice. If a servicemember dies on active duty because of a military-connected cause, the servicemember and his or her family are automatically enrolled in the SBP program.

There is a second group of survivors who can also enroll in the SBP program. A veteran who is classified as a retiree--someone who has served for at least 20 years--is eligible to enroll in the program. After they leave the service, retirees can contribute a portion of their retirement pay to SBP. This contribution entitles their survivors up to 55 percent of the retiree's base retirement pay after his or her death.

Since 1972, retirees have paid into the program with a portion of their retirement income in order to improve their family's financial security upon their death. Some retirees have paid into the program for over 30 years.

What Michelle and Ted did not know was that the SBP they thought they could count on--approximately $1,200 per month--would be reduced, dollar-for-dollar, by another benefit from the Department of Veterans Affairs dependency and indemnity compensation, DIC, program.

DIC is a monthly benefit payment to the survivors of all servicemembers who have died from a service-connected condition. That includes both those who die on active duty and veterans whose deaths resulted from a service-related injury.

What many SBP participants and their future survivors do not know is that the SBP-DIC dollar-for-dollar offset can leave widows and orphans with up to $1,200 less per month than they had expected to receive. When planning a family budget this unforeseen reduction can be devastating.

For example, if a widow's husband served for over 20 years, retired, paid into the SBP program and then died of a service-connected disability, she may think that she is entitled to both the full SBP and DIC payments. However, if she planned to receive $1,300 per month from SBP and $1,200 per month from DIC, she could be surprised to learn that the dollar-for dollar offset would reduce her $1,300 SBP payment by the $1,200 DIC payment and she would be left with DIC intact, but only $100 in SBP per month.

As this body knows well, for 8 years I have fought to repeal the law that offsets the monetary payments between the SBP annuity and the DIC benefit. This body may recall that in 2005 we took a step in the right direction and passed by 92-6 an amendment to repeal the unjust SBP-DIC offset. In the 2008 Defense authorization, we cracked the door to eliminating the offset by getting a ``special payment'' of $50 per month. This special payment, called the special survivor indemnity allowance, is received by the widows and orphans whose SBP payments are offset by the DIC they receive. This year, the Congress increased the special payment to $310 per month, by 2017, for the widows and orphans impacted by the SBP-DIC offset. This increase came from savings found in the tobacco legislation, which became law on June 22, 2009.

Michelle allowed me to speak of her case, but she isn't alone. When widows, veterans, and constituents speak to me in support of my efforts to repeal this offset, they often tell me that they did not know that the offset existed.

If Michelle and Ted, with 39 years of combined service upon his death, didn't know about this offset then we have a bigger problem out there: the Services don't adequately educate our servicemembers and their families about their benefits, especially the offsets to their benefits. This year, we will change that.

The amendment I filed to the fiscal year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, Senate Amendment No. 1808 to S. 1390, will increase servicemembers' and their families' awareness of their service-related benefits during transitions and events in a servicemember's career.

My amendment will require the Services to provide information to servicemembers and their families about their disability, death, education, and survivor benefits, including any offsets.

My amendment requires the Services to provide this information when a servicemember enters or leaves the service either through retirement or at the end of his or her service. The services must also provide information when a servicemember is classified as having a service-connected disability and is unfit to perform their duty.

We all believe it is important for servicemembers and their families to receive certain benefits because of their service to the Nation. It is my guess that we also believe that servicemembers and their families should know about those benefits. We sometimes take for granted that we're doing enough, but I believe we can do more and benefits education is a small but important step toward taking better care of our people.

Now I want to be clear, the Services are making honorable efforts to educate our troops about their benefits, but we all agree that we can do better. I asked the Services about their procedures, and I was surprised that there are few standards or requirements that compel the Services to educate servicemembers and their families about disability, death, education and survivor benefits. Thus, I believe that our joint approach with the Services will go a long way to bring uniformity of content and access to all servicemembers and their families.

So, after gathering the information, I spoke with the Pentagon about the changes I was proposing and the possibility that I would file legislation. The Department provided numerous improvements to the legislation, including additional requirements for more information to be provided to servicemembers and their families. I appreciate their engagement and their thoughtful responses. I think it made for a better bill and a better amendment.

Requiring benefits education about service-related benefits will help achieve the basic goal of raising awareness, not only about servicemembers' benefits, but also about the offsets to those benefits.

This legislation is another step in the right direction; another step toward raising awareness about the law that requires the unjust SBP-DIC offset.

However, as awareness is raised we must continue to work hard to enact a law that will repeal the unjust offset. Our servicemembers not only earned or purchased this annuity; they and their survivors rely on the government to provide them with accurate information and the benefits they expect and deserve. We must continue to right these wrongs.

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