On Death Pay Benefits

Recently, the 109th Congress has been mulling the idea of increasing the "death pay" benefit that goes to US military personnel killed fighting the War on Terror. Currently, it's about $12,000, which is a nice chunk of change - if you're in high school.

The current proposal, which has bipartisan support, would increase pay to families of military personnel killed in certain theatres (read: Iraq, Afghanistan) since 2001 to $100,000 and increase life insurance payments, which come several months after the fact, to $400,000. All told, this will cost maybe five hundred million dollars.

I mentioned in a previous posting to this weblog that Democrats shouldn't whine or moan about military spending that went towards troop protection or support - body armor was my subject du jour that day.

This is another case where Democrats, who have spent a lot of time complaining about the President's fiscal policy, should shut up and do the right thing. This actually could play into spending policy critiques of the President and the Republican Party in general, especially since the Party bounced the previous House Veterans Affairs Committee Chair, Chris Smith (R-NJ) because he asked for precisely this sort of thing - a death pay benefit (story here).

Thankfully, this pay increase has bipartisan support, but it would behoove the Democrats to ask for one thing: replace the War on Terror stipulation in the bill with "All combat zones," so that US military personnel killed in, say, Bosnia, or any other theater, would receive the same pay. Just because you're not being shot at or mortared by jihadists doesn't make you less valuable to your family.

Seems like a good idea to me.

(Good story on death pay increase here)