washington scene
2014 Goals
Protecting pay, force levels, retirement, and health care for uniformed servicemembers and their families — especially wounded warriors and their caregivers — tops MOAA’s legislative goals list.
The previous 12 years of wartime sacrifice, stress, and hardship were accompanied by unprecedented quality-of-life improvements. But over the past year, we’ve witnessed a rising tide of threats to critical military personnel programs. Now, virtually every military program is under scrutiny. Congress’ failure to pass a comprehensive debt-reduction plan triggered across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration March 1, 2013, and DoD is absorbing half of all sequester cuts.
Sequestration cut more than $50 billion from the defense budget in 2013 and, if left unchecked, will cut an additional $50 billion from the budget each year for the next nine years. This comes on top of the more than $487 billion in cuts the Pentagon already has agreed to absorb. Defense and congressional leaders have acknowledged adding to that figure via sequestration will be devastating to military readiness.
MOAA’s concern is such a purely budget-driven focus dramatically raises the prospects for large and inappropriate cuts in crucial compensation programs essential to sustaining a top-quality career force.
Significant changes in the career incentives that form the core pillars of the all-volunteer force must be approached with considerable skepticism. Congress should consider often-repeated historical experiences — the ill-advised adjustments that hurt retention and readiness and ended up costing the country at least as much to fix as they had been projected to save.
Intensifying budget scrutiny affects not only military programs and benefits but also Social Security, Medicare, federal civilian pay and retirement, COLAs, health care, and virtually everything else the government spends money on.
The remainder of this column provides a summary of key MOAA legislative objectives for 2014.
MOAA’s Top 10 Goals for 2014
■ Sustain military pay compatibility with private sector
■ Bar disproportional TRICARE fee hikes
■ Sustain force levels to meet mission needs
■ Prevent Medicare/ TRICARE payment cuts
■ Protect military retirement/COLAs
■ Protect wounded warriors and caregivers
■ End disabled/survivor financial penalties
■ Fix Guard/Reserve retirement
■ Improve spouse and family support
■ Eliminate the VA claims backlog and improve claims processing
Defense Force Levels
Fund people and weapons
MOAA believes maintaining military manpower, replacing and upgrading weapons and equipment worn out by years of war, and treating servicemembers fairly are not mutually exclusive.
Addressing our nation’s debt is a priority, and all Americans must be prepared to share the sacrifices required to accomplish it. But a nation still at war must meet funding needs for both people and weapons, rather than sacrificing one for the other.
MOAA is very concerned budget cuts driven by sequestration will force service planners to impose even steeper drawdown efforts, where the burden of ongoing operations will fall on the shoulders of the remaining troops and their families while posing inappropriate risks on the nation’s ability to respond to future contingencies.
To the extent force cuts require separation of members with lengthy service, MOAA supports the use of the early retirement authority and enhanced voluntary separation incentives to more fairly recognize these members’ extended service and sacrifice.
take action: Subscribe to MOAA’s weekly email Legislative Update at
www.moaa.org/email.
42 MILITARY OFFICER JANUARY 2014
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