washingtonscene Instead of penalizing troops and their
Quote of the Month “We’re going from three cops to two cops in a pretty rough neighborhood.” — Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta on the effect of impending defense cuts.
families, Ryan urged holding defense lead- ers accountable for their continuing failure to meet their own responsibilities for ef- fective program oversight. Noting years of GAO and DoD IG reports have declared Pentagon bookkeeping so slipshod as to be unauditable, he asked what corporate lead- ers would be able to escape consequences for such mismanagement. “I ask all of our leaders in Washington to
reexamine their priorities,” wrote Ryan in the Times op-ed, “and ask whether their ac- tions reinforce or belie their frequent words of support for those who have served and sacrificed in uniform for the rest of us.”
MOAA Blasts Retirement
Proposals Retention and readiness would suffer.
A
t an Oct. 25, 2011, hearing before the House Armed Services Military Personnel subcommittee,
MOAA Government Relations Director Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF-Ret., called proposals for dramatic military-retirement cutbacks “shockingly insensitive” to the extraordinary sacrifices inherent in a multi- decade service career. Subcommittee chair Rep. Joe Wilson
(R-S.C.) agreed, citing the “radical” plan proposed by the Defense Business Board to scrap the military defined benefit system in favor of a 401(k)-style plan that would defer receipt of any payments until age 60 or later. He took top defense leaders to task for failing to immediately disavow the proposal but reserved special criticism for Defense Business Board leaders for declining to ap- pear at the hearing to justify their proposal.
32 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2012
Strobridge said that is only one of sev-
eral recent plans that would dramatically cut retired pay for career personnel. He said that would be a “formula for reten- tion and readiness disaster that would have destroyed the career force if it had been in effect over the last 10 years of war.” Strobridge reminded legislators the pri- mary purpose of the military retirement package is to induce top-quality people to serve multiple decades under conditions few Americans are willing to endure. Defense witnesses acknowledged the Defense Business Board proposal would have a negative effect on retention and went a step further to refute claims by some critics that military retirement costs are spiraling out of control. Dr. Jo Ann Rooney, principal deputy under secretary of defense for Personnel and Readiness, said the current system is “neither unaffordable, nor spiraling out of control,” noting retirement costs as a percentage of pay have remained reasonably constant.
She said DoD is considering possible
retirement alternatives as part of a review of the total military compensation pack- age, and a top priority is to protect against negative recruiting and retention effects. She said the Pentagon has tasked RAND Corp. to do a study on alternatives, but no date has been set for the release of results. When asked why the military system
shouldn’t be more like plans available to civilians, Strobridge said, “The past decade only highlights the enormous demands and sacrifices that have no counterpart in civilian employment, including frequent re- locations that disrupt spousal earnings and children’s education and the prospect of being deployed to a combat zone time after time after time, with ever-increasing odds of coming home a changed person.” He noted further the Pentagon already has considerable experience with adverse
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