Veteran Issues Digest Number 1728

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1. Same Bill, Same Beef Over Early Retirement For Reservists

Posted by: "Colonel Dan" colonel-dan@sbcglobal.net coloneldan1

Wed Jan 23, 2008 7:00 am (PST)

http://www.military .com/features/ 0,15240,160247, 00.html

Reservists Sidelined On Retirement
Tom Philpott | January 17, 2008
Same Bill, Same Beef Over Early Retirement For Reservists

The $696 billion defense authorization bill for 2008, which Congress expects
to return to White House by next week for a promised signature, has a host
of critical pay and benefit initiatives for service members at war.

The House passed a revised HR 1585 Jan. 16, removing a provision that would
expose foreign governments to more U.S. court actions and which sparked the
president's veto. The only other change ensures that bonus and pay
authorities suspended after the veto will be applied retroactively to Jan. 1
so that no service member suffers a veto-related financial penalty.

The bill's 3.5 percent basic pay raise means that for an eighth straight
year military compensation will rise faster than average private sector
wages.

The personnel issue still stirring hard feelings involves, ironically, the
first-ever step by Congress to lower the age 60 threshold for Reserve and
National Guard retired pay. The bill says that for every 90 consecutive days
spent mobilized, reservists will see the age-60 start for payment of
annuities cut by three months. So a reservist eligible to retire who was
mobilized for 18 months could begin to draw retired pay at 58-and-a-half.

The razor in the cake is the effective date. The early retirement provision
applies only to mobilization periods after the bill is signed. It leaves out
more than 600,000 members mobilized since 9/11 for Afghanistan and Iraq and
to respond to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. About 142,000 of
them have been deployed multiple times the past six years.

Unable to find budget dollars to apply the change as proponents intended, to
all members called up since 9/11, Congress decided to pass what it could and
risk a pummeling for denigrating earlier reserve service.

"It's a way for Congress to appear to being do something and actually giving
nothing. What a crock!" wrote John P., an Army reservist in Iraq.

"Of all the good things I see happening to support our combat troops, this
one bad decision counters much of it," wrote Maj. Brian McManus, a member of
the Alabama Army National Guard.

Retired Air Force Reserve Col. Paul Groskreutz, president of the Reserve
Officers Association, said Congress has created a "disincentive" to service.
Many reservists who have served multiple tours, he warned, "will likely quit
in frustration. "

Capt. Marshall Hanson, USNR-Ret., ROA's legislative director, understands
the anger. He also believes that lawmakers will use the dissatisfaction of
so many reservists to make more retirement changes.

Last fall the Senate had accepted a floor amendment from Sen. Saxby
Chambliss (R-Ga.) to establish the 90-day rule to lower the reserve
retirement age for mobilizations since fall of 2001. The House had passed no
such provision. When House-Senate negotiators met to work out details on the
bill, Chambliss and colleagues had no way to pay for his amendment.

Under congressional budget rules, which the House enforces more rigidly, any
increase in entitlement spending, which includes reserve retirement, must be
paid for with higher taxes or cuts in other entitlements.

Conferees did find some entitlement offsets. Most were tied to a provision
that will force drug manufacturers to apply federal pricing discounts to
medicines dispensed from TRICARE retail pharmacies. This freed up
entitlement dollars by lowering future health costs for older retirees.

Most of that money was used, however, to expand Combat-Related Special
Compensation effective Jan. 1, 2008, to thousands of veterans forced from
service short of 20 years because of combat-related injuries.

"I don't know that people recognize how big that is," said a proud
congressional staffer. Until now most dollars that Congress has spent to
allow "concurrent receipt" of both military retirement and VA disability pay
have gone to retirees who retired after 20 years "with inherent conditions
of old age, which then are deemed service-connected, " he said.

The people cited most often in arguing for concurrent receipt were "those
who got shot up on a battlefield, " the staffer said. "But until now that
wasn't where the money was going." This change, he said, was "far more
important than reserve retirement."

The estimated cost of applying the reserve retirement change to
mobilizations since 9/11 is $2.1 billion over 10 years. The change enacted
will cost one-tenth of that amount, $213 million, through 2017.

"I'm pleased we were able to at least make a chip" in legislative resistance
to lowering reserve retirement age, said Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.). He served
on the conference committee that accepted the compromise retirement change,
explaining that it was presented as part of a package of compromises on
Guard and Reserve benefits. Reservists should be upset.

"I would be upset," said Wilson, who began drawing retired pay for 31 years
of combined Army Reserve and National Guard service last August.

Days after the bill emerged from conference, Wilson introduced HR 4930 which
would apply the early retirement rule to mobilizations since 9/11. He said
reservists feeling left out need to let their members of Congress know, and
to urge them to back his bill. So far it has only three co-sponsors.

"The good news is that the vast majority of members of Congress will be
spending time with troops as they are returning or being deployed. That is
a wonderful time for troops to make their position known," Wilson said.

Lindsay Mabry, a spokeswoman for Chambliss, said the senator is considering
introducing more legislation on the issue this year.

"Obviously we do think this was a very good first step," she said.

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