Doug Jones And Susan Collins Push To Repeal Military Widow’s Tax

WASHINGTON, DC — Senators Doug Jones (D-Ala.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) are leading a new effort to ensure that the Military Widow’s Tax Elimination Act of 2019 will be included in the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The senators Monday sent a bipartisan letter—co-signed by 64 of their Senate colleagues—to the chairmen and ranking members of both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees calling on them to ensure the House-passed provisions to repeal the Military Widow’s Tax remain in the final version of the NDAA conference agreement. The final bill is currently being negotiated between the House and the Senate.

"There has never before been more bipartisan support in Congress for repealing the SBP-DIC offset. Currently, there are 75 co-sponsors of legislation to repeal the widow’s tax in the Senate and 371 co-sponsors in the House," the senators wrote. "We have an obligation to make sure that we are taking care of our military families who have sacrificed so much. This problem goes back decades, but this year we can finally solve it once and for all. It is our time to do our duty not only to support the brave men and women of our military, but also to support their families."

If signed into law, this legislation will repeal the unfair law that prevents as many as 67,000 surviving military spouses nationwide from receiving their full Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs survivor benefits. Currently, military widows and widowers who qualify for the VA’s Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) are forced to take a dollar-for-dollar offset from the Survivors Benefits Plan (SBP) benefit, even though retirees elected to pay into the program.

Legislation to repeal the Military Widow’s Tax has been repeatedly introduced in the Senate over the past 18 years, but has reached an unprecedented level of support under Senator Jones’s leadership. With Senator Jones as the lead sponsor, the bill has earned a record-high 75 cosponsors in the Senate. In addition to encouraging continued support of this legislation in the Senate, Senator Jones has continuously engaged his House counterparts at the leadership and committee level to ensure support for the bill and its inclusion in the House version of the NDAA.