Storming for Fairness
MOAA takes the Hill to improve the Survivor Benefit Plan.
By Col. Warren S. Lacy, USA-Ret.

Bring 52 presidents of MOAA's councils and chapters to Washington, D.C. Partner them with members of the association's board of directors and staff. Brief them thoroughly on key issues. Arm them with persuasive literature and handouts. And then send them on a daylong mission to visit the offices of every senator and representative, pushing to fix a major problem affecting military survivors.

What's the occasion? It's MOAA's annual Storming the Hill, of course. This year's campaign will put your team on Capitol Hill Thursday, March 27. The association has been planning this particular engagement for months, and mop-up actions will continue for quite some time after. We'll report the outcome of this year's event in the June issue of Military Officer.

We alert you now, because this issue carries an important statement about the military Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP). The story, "Fighting for Fairness" (page 69), begins with a view through the eyes of a typical military survivor. Lt. Col. Roger Welch, usa, signed up for SBP years ago, thinking it would pay his wife, Dottie, 55 percent of his retired pay for the rest of her life. But when he died in June 2002, Dottie was dismayed to learn she would lose one-third of her annuities at age 62. Dottie's case is not unusual, and the Social Security offset is just one of three significant inequities of SBP.

Our feature story spells out the various SBP inequities and proposes a fix that your council and chapter leaders and MOAA's staff will take to the Hill this month. We've also reproduced the article as a handout for them to use to support our campaign to improve this program.

The other facet of the campaign, as usual, is the support and participation of every MOAA member. On the cover of last month's magazine, we provided four postcards and asked members, their spouses, and their friends to mail them in support of improving SBP. If you haven't done so - and still have the cards - please lend your voice to the cause. The other way to register your opinion on this issue is to visit MOAA's Web site at http://capwiz.com/moaa/issues/bills. Scroll down to "Survivor Issues," click on the "Increase SBP Age 62 Annuity" links, and follow instructions to send comments to your senators and representatives.

As we fight to upgrade this important program to provide more equitable coverage for older military survivors, we also salute our military forces who once again are deployed in harm's way. At press time, we don't know what course the crisis in Iraq will take. But we do know that once again our country has called upon its finest young men and women. And once again they have answered that call with pride and determination.