Amendment offers families with children choice when both being deployed at the same time

Congressman Aaron Schock (R-IL) successfully introduced an amendment during debate on the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012 that passed the House today.

Schock’s amendment allows a service member with a minor dependent – a child under the age of 19 – to request a deferment of deployment to a combat zone if their spouse is currently deployed to a combat zone.

“We ask an extraordinary amount from our all volunteer military, especially over the last decade during our country’s involvement in multiple simultaneous conflicts, so I think in return the least we can do is give dual-military families an option available to them if both spouses are deployed during the same time period,” said Schock.

Based on 2009 statistics, there are approximately 93,130 active duty military personnel who are married to other active duty military personnel, also known as dual-military families. This makes up 6.6% of the active duty force. Of those, 39,647 have minor dependents, or about 2.8% of the active duty force. In 2006 alone, there were approximately 500 families with a minor dependent that had both dual marriage members deployed at the same time for more than six consecutive months.

The Schock amendment would grant a service member a deferment of current deployment until such a date as to when both parents would not be subjected to dueling deployments in combat zones.

Congressman Schock was encouraged to offer the amendment after the family of United States Army Specialists Ron Gebur, who was killed in Iraq in 2006, reached out to him. Army Specialists Gebur had been deployed with his unit since the previous year. At the time of his death, his wife Bethany had received her orders to deploy to Iraq. Her deployment orders would have required her to leave well before her husband was scheduled to return home, leaving their 9 month old son, Gage, without either parent to care for him.

Army Specialists Ron Gebur was highly decorated for his service in the Army receiving the Bronze Star Medal, the Purple Heart Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, National Defense Service Medal, the Iraq Campaign Medal, Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Combat Infantryman Badge.

During debate on the amendment, Schock spoke out in support of his amendment, “Today, I’m offering an amendment that would give dual-military families with children some flexibility, knowing that they have an option to defer concurrent deployment into a war zone,” said Schock. “We need to ensure that these families don’t have to choose between serving their family, and serving their country.”

The National Defense Authorization Act is expected to pass the House later this week on Thursday.