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Defense leaders say fixing such disruptions is one of the top 10 quality-of-life issues for military families.
The 40 states signed up so far cover nearly 90 percent of school-age military children in the U.S.
But MOAA’s goal is to have all 50 states and the District of Columbia sign the compact.
Georgia, with more than 42,000 military children, is the largest-population state that hasn’t joined the compact. MOAA recently wrote Gov. Nathan Deal urging him to support this important state legislation.
Work also needs to be done in Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon, and Wyoming.
MOAA’s network of chapters and councils has been instrumental in winning approval in the first 40 states, and many are engaged in continuing efforts to win over the remaining states.
You Set a New Record
TRICARE proposal sparks extra advocacy efforts.
Starting Feb. 13, MOAA sent out several electronic alerts urging members to contact their legislators about the administration’s new proposal to impose very large health care fee hikes on the military community.
In response, MOAA members smashed a record by generating more than 110,000 messages to Capitol Hill in just more than a week. We’re grateful for your support, and we ask you to continue sending messages and asking your friends to do the same.
Some members have asked why we send multiple alerts and whether it does any good for them to send the suggested message more than once.
We’d like to think everyone opens and reads every message we send them, but people are busy, and that doesn’t happen. In addition, some subscribe to MOAA’s Legislative Update but not the News Exchange, or vice versa.
Only by putting the alert in more than one message and delivering it in more than one venue can we get the word to more members and maximize the volume of messages that reach Capitol Hill.
And because volume counts, it is indeed helpful for the same member to send the message more than once. Consider it a “foot stomp” to tell your legislators this is extra important to you.
A lot of high-powered corporate lobbyists are out there investing tons of money to protect their share of the budget at your expense.
The military community is a tiny fragment of the constituent population, and we need to do everything in our power to maximize its volume.
If you get alerts from more than one association on this topic, we encourage you to participate in all of them to increase your personal clout and the cumulative clout of the organizations you belong to.
MOAA is pulling out every stop to fight the administration’s TRICARE fee proposal, but it’s the cumulative grassroots efforts of persistent and passionate constituents that carry the real weight with Congress. MO
— Contributors are Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF-Ret., director; Col. Mike Hayden, USAF-Ret.; Col. Bob Norton, USA-Ret.; Cmdr. René Campos, USN-Ret.; Capt. Kathy Beasley, USN-Ret.; Col. Phil Odom, USAF-Ret.; Karen Golden; Bret Shea; and Matt Murphy, MOAA’s Government Relations Department. To subscribe to MOAA’s Legislative Update, visit
www.moaa.org/email.
*fact: The previous weekly record of MOAA messages sent to Capitol Hill was just more than 75,000.
40 MILITARY OFFICER APRIL 2012
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