washington scene
Support the use of the transfer-of-benefits authority as a military career incentive. Seek consolidation of all GI bill programs into a simpler, clearer framework under veterans’ benefits law.
Commissaries and exchanges
Protect against privatization, consolidation, reduction in services, or elimination efforts in commissary and exchange programs. Sustain funding support, and guard against diminution of this substantial benefit for active, reserve, and retired servicemembers and their families and survivors.
Dependent education
Protect DoD dependent schools, ensure full funding of Impact Aid for public schools with significant populations of military children, and encourage remaining states to sign the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children to promote interstate reciprocity for graduation and transfer of credit requirements.
Spousal employment
Seek expansion of spousal employment opportunities, to include incentives for employers and contractors to hire military spouses. Seek tax credits or other support means for military spouses to obtain licenses or certifications required as a result of military relocations. Continue to advocate at the state level for legislation that supports military spouse license portability and encourage all states to extend unemployment benefits to military spouses forced to resign due to military-directed relocations.
Additional Issues
Veterans’ employment and disability
Support legislative and executive initiatives to support veterans’ employment and career goals after separating from military service. MOAA continues to support digitizing records and processes and training new claims workers to high standards and providing incentives for first-time quality decisions. Twelve years of war claims from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and new Agent Orange disease presumptions are driving demand far beyond the VA’s improving capacity to manage the enormous backlog. MOAA also supports recognizing “blue water” Navy Vietnam War Agent Orange claims for service-connection.
Social Security and Medicare reform
Resist initiatives that impose disproportionate penalties on particular segments of the beneficiary or taxpayer population or fail to protect long-lived beneficiaries’ income from the ravages of inflation.
Social Security
Sustaining the future financial viability of Social Security often is portrayed as requiring either disproportionate benefit reductions or tax increases for future generations. Older Americans depend on Social Security after paying decades of payroll taxes in good faith. Actions to restore the program’s long-term financial viability must fairly balance the legitimate interests of both current and future beneficiaries, and no group should be forced to bear disproportionate sacrifice.
MO
— Contributors are Col. Mike Hayden, USAF (Ret), director; Col. Mike Barron, USA (Ret); Col. Bob Norton, USA (Ret); Capt. Kathy Beasley, USN (Ret); Col. Phil Odom, USAF (Ret); Col. Catherine Mozden Lewis, ARNG (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.
JANUARY 2014 MILITARY OFFICER 49
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