For Immediate Release
June 13, 2003
Contact: Douglas Moore
(202) 225-6531
404-433-5561 - cell

Discharge Petition Introduced by Congressman Jim Marshall, Veterans Groups to Eliminate the Disabled Veterans Tax Already at 119 Signatures

(Washington, D.C.) - Yesterday, Congressman Jim Marshall and leaders from several major veterans organizations introduced a discharge petition to force a vote on H.R. 303, the Retired Pay Restoration Act of 2003. Veterans groups who placed their support behind this petition include the American Legion, the Disabled American Veterans, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Fleet Reserve Association, the Military Officers Association of America, the National Association for Uniformed Services, the Non-Commissioned Officers Association and the Retired Enlisted Association.

Legislation to allow disabled military veterans to concurrently receive both retirement and disability compensation has been introduced in every Congress since 1987.

"It's time for Congress to put up or shut up," said Marshall. "This legislation has been introduced each Congress for the last sixteen years. That's sixteen years too many."

H.R. 303, introduced by Michael Bilirakis of Florida, would authorize the government to implement full payment of both retirement pay and disability compensation to half a million disabled military retirees. This legislation is considered to be bipartisan has 326 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle. Similar legislation has already passed the Senate. Under current law, retired veterans with a service-connected disability and twenty years of honorable service are not permitted to receive both disability compensation and military retired pay for their years of military service from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

"There has long been a fiction that military retirees receive benefits from the government for their disability. But most don't. To add insult to injury, as a veteran's disability increases, so does the penalty imposed by our government," said Marshall.

A discharge petition is a special House rule allowing for a majority of the House, 218 Representatives, to force a vote on an issue that is being bottled up in committee or by the leadership. It is the same extraordinary procedure used to force passage of campaign finance reform legislation in the last Congress.