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COLA Watch Inflation jumped 0.3 percent in August to 3.6 percent for the year. The 2012 COLA figure will depend on what happens to inflation in September. It should be somewhere between 3.4 percent and 3.7 percent, depending on whether inflation falls or rises in that final month of the fiscal year.
Will some staffers tell you they ignore mass mailings? On occasion. But that al- most certainly isn’t their boss’ position. Legislators know they ignore constituent input at their electoral peril. Most Hill of- fices have a rule of thumb that for every constituent letter on a topic, there are another 10 or more constituents who care about the same issue. Some organizations or individuals
generate mass messages from a single fax machine, etcetera. Those aren’t real con- stituent inputs, and they do get ignored for the most part. But when large numbers of individual
constituents take the time to send individ- ual messages or letters, that’s a different thing entirely — especially if the letters are individualized in some way, such as with a handwritten PS. So don’t let anybody tell you sending an
MOAA-suggested message or letter won’t make a difference. Exercising your grassroots muscle this
way is the key to influencing your legisla- tors. You can enhance that influence by per- sonalizing your letters in some way — and by passing on the suggested text to friends, relatives, and neighbors and urging them to add to the volume of constituent mail. In the tough budget times ahead, maxi-
mizing grassroots input to your legislators has never been more important.
Bills Plan I
Defense Cuts Appropriators trim the budget.
n September, the Senate Appropria- tions subcommittee began action on the FY 2012 Defense Appropriations Bill, the platform for coming defense budget cuts. The subcommittee recommended freezing DoD spending at $513 billion for FY 2012,
36 MILITARY OFFICER NOVEMBER 2011
cutting funding for several weapon sys- tems, and reducing $5 billion in funding for Afghanistan operations. This is $26 billion less than President
Obama requested and $17 billion less than the House-passed defense spend- ing bill (H.R. 2219). The Senate version would meet targets for overall defense spending in FY 2012 as required in the August debt deal. Appropriations Committee Chair
Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) said the reductions reflect the realities of “this austere fiscal climate … while some of the cuts will be considered tough, we believe they are not only fair but prudent.” The bill does provide a 1.6-percent mili-
tary pay raise and roughly $40 billion for DoD health care programs.
Cuts Could “Hollow Out”
T
Military House defense panel expresses concern about proposals.
he House Armed Services Com- mittee is preparing an analysis on the effects of deep defense cuts to
submit to the so-called “super committee,” tasked with reducing the national debt by more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. Armed Services Committee Chair Rep.
Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.) fears any super committee proposals for more defense cuts would lead to a “hollowing out” of the military. DoD already is on the hook for $350 bil- lion in cuts over the next 10 years as part of the recent debt-ceiling legislation. The super committee by law must come up with another $1.2 trillion in combined cuts or revenue increases by Thanksgiving.
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