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Even among older members with longer memories, enactment of TRICARE For Life, elimination of the retired-pay offset for more severely disabled retirees, and elimination of the age-62 benefit reduction for survivors now mostly are taken for granted. Many feel safe Congress has recognized these benefits were hard-earned by their extended service and sacrifice in uniform.
If you’re among them, let me remind you the past decade has been the exception, not the rule.
The gains we’ve made are not safe, and those who think politicians aren’t likely to change their minds about funding them are naive. It’s happened multiple times before, and it’s more than likely to happen again.
Remember the roller coaster analogy?
The peaks of the early 1970s and mid-1980s were followed by the crashes of the late 1970s and late 1990s as wars ended and budget crunches changed national funding priorities.
Now with the troops home from Iraq, most Americans thinking we should get out of Afghanistan, and the nation facing fiscal problems far worse than those of the ’70s and ’90s, we’re again at the peak of the military funding roller coaster.
With stomach-churning funding cuts coming every 20 years or so, anyone paying attention to history can see things aren’t looking good for the “20-teens.”
If you think the military — or any other group of Americans, young or old, rich or poor — will be exempt from some pretty significant sacrifices over the rest of this decade, you’re deceiving yourself.
Does that mean we roll over and give up? Absolutely not.
But it means we’re going to have to pull out all the stops to avoid having military people hit with disproportional sacrifices. In adding up who has sacrificed what, the equation must include not only the extraordinary sacrifices inherent in decades of military service but also the financial sacrifices already incurred because of past rounds of budget cuts (such as forfeiting thousands a year in retired pay from having retired after years of depressed pay raises).
But it’s going to be an extraordinarily tough battle.
It’s no accident government leaders targeted the defense budget for half of the cuts under current sequestration law. Many in the country see military (war) spending as draining funds from other pressing needs and see the end of the war as the golden opportunity to do some reallocation.
History shows clearly all the people who felt “nothing’s too good for the troops” in wartime always start thinking “My gosh, look at those rich military benefits,” when the next budget crunch comes.
So when the fight to do right by military families comes to a head (and it’s starting in earnest right now), are you among the 90 percent who seem to think “military leaders or Congress will take care of us” or “MOAA will win the battle whether I become a member or not”?
Or are you going to get involved — and urge your friends to get involved — to protect against being hit with a disproportional share of the major national sacrifices coming in the next few years?
We started with Buffalo Springfield, so we’ll end with the Everly Brothers: “Wake up, little Susie.”
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; Matt Murphy; and Jamie Naughton, MOAA’s Government Relations Department. To subscribe to MOAA’s Legislative Update, visit
www.moaa.org/email.
40 MILITARY OFFICER DECEMBER 2012
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