Stay Engaged fromthechairman
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As our nation struggles with a faltering economy and dysfunctional government, MOAA needs its members to make your individual voices heard through One Powerful Voice®.
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” So wrote Thomas Paine in Decem- ber 1776. Paine was dealing with the revolt against tyranny. Today, we are dealing with the simultaneous failure of the government and market-based economy that Paine and our founding fathers established. This might strike you as hyperbole, but I think it aptly describes the condition in which we fi nd ourselves going into 2012: an economy having great diffi culty climbing out of re- cession, Congress unable to carry out its legislative responsibilities, the country mired in debt with no consensus on how to deal with it, and government, in general, becoming increasingly dysfunctional. As a backdrop, the developed countries of West- ern Europe are struggling with their own versions of the same phenomenon: eco- nomic doldrums and political paralysis. At the bottom of all this is a congenital tendency for democratic governments to spend more than they take in. In my day-to-day role as president of the Navy- Marine Corps Relief Society, I deal with the suff ering that occurs when individual Sailors and Marines succumb to the temp- tation to overspend. There is no solution but to correct the imbalance. We will not make a no-interest loan to them until they have established a budget that will get them back in balance. That’s exactly what we need to do at the national level — but the fi tful eff orts to bring the $15 trillion national debt under control have spawned a variety of poorly
12 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2012
conceived assaults on the interests of cur- rently serving and retired military person- nel. MOAA has gone to general quarters to thwart the most ill-conceived, but we will need all of our members to stay fully en- gaged as events play themselves out. Perhaps the most serious threats to
MOAA membership are the draconian changes proposed to the TRICARE system. MOAA is against the proposed changes and needs to redouble our eff orts in key areas to let Congress know how we feel, especially when access to care is increasingly at risk. Changes to the military retirement sys-
tem are looming. We know from history signifi cant changes in fundamental career incentives will jeopardize the nation’s abil- ity to sustain a top-quality career force. MOAA strongly opposes eff orts to civilian- ize the military benefi t package because military service conditions demand extraor- dinary sacrifi ces not required of civilians. Much of what could happen is up to DoD and the administration. Our past experience with discretionary authority indicates it is only a matter of time before budget issues drive the secretary of defense to impose radically larger fees that ignore the huge, in-kind premiums already paid by our troops and their families.
— Adm. Steve Abbot, USN-Ret.
PHOTO: STEVE BARRETT
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