Lawmakers OK special pay for shooting victims - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

Lawmakers OK special pay for shooting victims

The House Armed Services Committee approved a precedent-setting special pay aimed at the victims of the 2009 shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, and at a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting station.

The new special pay, approved by voice vote, would be a one-time payment equal to what those killed and wounded would have received if they were in a combat zone at the time of the shootings.

For service members, this would include any special pays and bonuses they might have received, a $150,000 life insurance payment even for those not signed up for Combat Servicemembers’ Group Life Insurance, and the advantage of not having to pay federal income tax on money earned in a combat zone.

For Defense Department civilian employees, such as the one killed at Fort Hood on Nov. 5, the one-time payment would include premium pay in a combat zone.

Calculations of the special pay would be made by the Defense Department. The money would go to the service member or civilian if they survived the attack, and to a survivor if the victim was killed in the attack or died of wounds sustained in the attack.

Although no one voted against the amendment to the 2011 defense authorization bill, controversy lingers over an amendment that declares the two shootings — and similar incidents outside of combat zones that might happen in the future — to be acts of war. It does this by saying they are the equivalent of acts “of an enemy of the United States.”

While he voted for the measure, Rep. Vic Snyder, D-Ark., said he worries about the precedent it would set because it applies only to service members and Defense Department civilians, and would not apply to someone who worked for another federal agency wounded or killed in the same incident.

Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., one of the sponsors of the amendment, said any such problems could be worked out later. In the meantime, he said, the legislation is important in declaring that victims of the two 2009 shootings “were combat casualties.

“We need to ensure they get all the recognition a combat casualty would receive,” he said.

The addition of the June 1 Little Rock shooting to the amendment was part of a compromise on a provision pushed by Republicans to make a point that the war on terror has hit home.

John Stone, spokesman for Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, whose district includes Fort Hood, said the amendment also aims to provide a Purple Heart to those injured or killed in the two shootings. But Stone said the adopted bill language is murky and will have to be clarified.