Stop-loss payment applications extended again - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Stop-loss payment applications extended again

Congress has extended — again — the cutoff date for service members and veterans to apply for retroactive stop-loss allowances if their active-duty service was extended against their will.

The new deadline for applying is Dec. 18.

Stop-loss allowance is a $500 payment for any month in which a service member spent one day or more under involuntary orders that delayed their retirement or separation from active duty.

The payment was created by Congress in 2008, over Defense Department objections, as additional compensation for the disruption in a person’s plans. It currently applies to anyone who received stop-loss orders since the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S.

The cutoff date for applications initially was Oct. 21, but was moved to Dec. 3 by Congress because thousands of eligible service members and veterans have not applied for benefits which are expected, on average, to total $3,700 a person. The deadline has been extended again as part of a short-term government spending bill passed by the Senate on Dec. 2.

Under terms of the new bill, stop-loss applications for retroactive payments now end at midnight Dec. 18, which is the expiration date for the temporary funding providing by the bill to keep the government running.

There is a chance, but no assurance, that the deadline for stop-loss allowance applications will be extended again when Congress provides funding beyond Dec. 18. There is a dispute unrelated to the stop-loss allowance about the expiration date for the next government funding bill. It could be only a few months or it could extend through the start of the next fiscal year, on Oct. 1, 2011.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who helped create the allowance and has pushed to have the deadline extended, said many people have not yet applied for the benefits they deserve.

“With tens of thousands of individuals affected by the stop-loss policy still unpaid, we must ensure as many service members as possible receive the bonus they earned,” he said.

Rep. Betty Sutton, D-Ohio, another of the original sponsors of the stop-loss allowance and sponsor of a bill earlier this year to extend the application window for another year, said she will keep trying to get an longer extension.

In the meantime, she said, “I urge the thousands of eligible service members who earned stop-loss compensation in Afghanistan and Iraq to file before the new Dec. 18 deadline.”