Decision Time Nears for Survivor Benefit Offset

The armed services committees will be deciding whether to continue to ease a sharp loss of survivor benefit payments for certain widows by extending or even bolstering their Special Survivor Indemnity Allowance (SSIA) which is due to expire on Oct. 1, 2017. At the other end of the spectrum of options, this one perhaps requiring a budget miracle given its projected cost of $7 billion over the next decade, Congress could decide to protect these surviving spouses more fully by ending the so-called SBP-DIC offset, which the SSIA was created to ease. For more on this issue, see this Military Advantage post.