Every year since 2005, the Senate has voted to eliminate the policy that denies widows the ability to collect both a military survivor's benefit and the full annuity bought when their military husbands were alive. But in each of those years, the fix was dropped when House and Senate negotiators wrote the final bill in private.

"What we always hear is that there is just no funding for us. 'Sorry, this is not your year,'" said Vivianne Wersel, chairwoman of the Government Relations Committee at Gold Star Wives of America.

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