Chairman’s Corner: ‘It’s Your Money; Come and Get It’

WASHINGTON — Time is run­ning out for those who qual­i­fy to receive their Stop Loss Spe­cial Pay. The dead­line to claim it is Oct. 21st, but less than half of the more than 145,000 peo­ple eli­gi­ble have sub­mit­ted claims.

It’s not a scam. And it’s not a joke. It’s YOUR mon­ey, so come get it. 

Just in case you had for­got­ten, the 2009 War Sup­ple­men­tal Appro­pri­a­tions Act autho­rized retroac­tive stop loss spe­cial pay of $500 for every month/partial month served in stop loss status. 

Ser­vice­mem­bers, vet­er­ans, and ben­e­fi­cia­ries of ser­vice­mem­bers who were invol­un­tar­i­ly extend­ed under stop loss between 9/11 and Sep­tem­ber 30th 2009 are eligible. 

The Con­gress gen­er­ous­ly set aside $534.4 mil­lion to pay out those funds, but as of the end of last month only $219 mil­lion in claims have been paid. 

We’ve used all kinds of dif­fer­ent ways to reach out to peo­ple and let them know, includ­ing let­ters to homes and help from Veteran/Military Ser­vice Orga­ni­za­tions. But there are still those who have yet to apply. 

So, with the dead­line fast approach­ing, I’m ask­ing every­one who reads this blog to pass it on to any­one else you think needs to see it. Qual­i­fy­ing indi­vid­u­als have served — or are still serv­ing — their coun­try nobly and deserve to be paid the mon­ey they’ve earned. 

The appli­ca­tion process is sim­ple and straight­for­ward. No strings attached. But once the dead­line pass­es, we can­not by law extend it. So jump online and check it out at: http://www.defense.gov/stoploss.

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

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