Republicans wrote their 2017 tax law so fast that the Senate voted at 2 a.m. on a version that still had edits hand-scribbled in the margins. They knew they would probably need to fix a few mistakes at some point later on.

Two years later, the economic boom the law was supposed to produce has failed to materialize but the mistakes have become very clear, and lawmakers are still trying to clean up after themselves.

Elizabeth Davis of Stafford, Virginia, is one person caught up in the mess. Davis normally owes a few hundred dollars around tax time. This year, she found herself with a nearly $10,000 bill thanks to wildly increased taxes on the death benefits she receives as a military widow.

It was like a gut punch, said Davis, 33, who is a full-time student working toward a communication degree.

Davis and her 11-year-old daughter have been receiving about $2,000 per month via two kinds of military survivor benefits since her husband Matthew Davis, a Marine Corps first lieutenant, was killed by a drunk driver at Camp Pendleton, California, five years ago this week.

Hers is just one of thousands of Gold Star families the name given to surviving relatives of deceased members of the armed services who got slapped with a giant tax bill because of a mistake in the law. Military families have long complained about how the government distributes death benefits, and the tax goof worsened a problem that was complicated enough to begin with.

Davis said not even her tax preparer understood what had gone wrong.

I was in complete and utter disbelief. I contacted friends who were lawyers, seeing if something had changed, Davis said. She also reached out to certified public accountants, veterans groups like the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors, and through social media she contacted other Gold Star widows. A pattern emerged.

All of us had big bills, varying from a couple grand into tens of thousands of dollars, Davis said.

As she started figuring out how to pay what she owed, Davis also wanted to make sure she wouldnt have to do it again next year. So shes undertaken her own lobbying effort to fix the flaw.