Bill would boost DIC payments 12 percent - Military News | News From Afghanistan, Iraq And Around The World - Military Times

Bill would boost DIC payments 12 percent

Dependency and Indemnity Compensation for surviving spouses and orphans would increase by 12 percent, the first significant adjustment in 12 years, under new bipartisan legislation.

Reps. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., and Tim Walz, D-Minn., are co-sponsors of the legislation, to be introduced this week, that would set the annuity at 55 percent of the rate of disability pay for someone who is permanently and totally disabled — the same percentage that applies to many other federal survivors programs.

Aside from annual inflation adjustments, this would be the first change in the Department of Veterans Affairs benefit in 16 years, according to Gold Star Wives of America, one of the many military and veterans groups supporting the proposal.

The basic rate is now $1,154 a month for a surviving spouse, plus another $286 a month if there are surviving children under than 18. More than 300,000 surviving spouses and more than 30,000 surviving children receive the payment.

Known as DIC, the monthly benefit is provided to survivors when a service member dies on active duty, when a veteran dies of a service-related injury or disease, or when a veteran dies of a nonservice-related condition but was totally and permanently disabled.

In that last instance, a death not related to military service, the veteran must have been rated as totally disabled for at least 10 years, or for at least five years if they were released from active-duty less than 10 years before death. DIC also is paid to survivors of veterans held for a year or more as a prisoner of war, a rule that applies only to deaths since Sept. 30, 1999.

Buyer, a Desert Storm veteran, is the ranking Republican on the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, which is responsible for DIC legislation. Walz, also a member of that committee, is a retired Army National Guard command sergeant major, making him the highest-ranking enlisted retiree ever to serve in Congress.

In a statement, Gold Star Wives, representing survivors of deceased service members and veterans, called the Buyer-Walz legislation “a milestone and the result of a tireless grass-roots effort among many members of the military community.”