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1995 SESSION


HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION NO. 573
Memorializing the Congress to enact legislation to permit full concurrent receipt of military longevity retirement pay and service-connected disability compensation pay.

Agreed to by the House of Delegates, February 4, 1995
Agreed to by the Senate, February 21, 1995

WHEREAS, the recent worldwide conflicts have highlighted again the contributions of this nation's military and retired veterans; and

WHEREAS, integral to the success of our military forces are those servicemen and servicewomen who have made a career of defending their country, who in peacetime may be called away to places remote from their families and loved ones, and who in war face the prospect of death or of serious disabling wounds as a constant possibility; and

WHEREAS, legislation has been introduced in the United States Congress to remedy an inequity applicable to military careerists; and

WHEREAS, the inequity concerns those veterans who are both retired and disabled and who, because of an antiquated law that dates to the nineteenth century, are denied concurrent receipt of full retirement pay and disability compensation pay, but instead may receive one or the other or must waive an amount of retirement pay equal to the amount of disability compensation pay; and

WHEREAS, no such deduction applies to the federal civil service so that a disabled veteran who has held a nonmilitary federal job for the requisite duration receives full longevity retirement pay undiminished by the subtraction of disability compensation pay; and

WHEREAS, a statutory change is necessary to correct this injustice and discrimination in order that America's occasional commitment to war in pursuit of national and international goals may be matched by an allegiance to those who sacrificed on behalf of those goals; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED by the House of Delegates, the Senate concurring, That Congress be urged to amend United States Code Chapter 71, relating to the compensation of retired military personnel, to permit full concurrent receipt of military longevity retirement pay and service-connected disability compensation pay; and, be it

RESOLVED FURTHER, That the Clerk of the House of Delegates transmit copies of this resolution to the President of the United States, to the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the President of the United States Senate, and to the members of the Virginia Congressional Delegation that they may be apprised of the sense of the General Assembly of Virginia in this matter.