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sponsibility, not the servicemember’s, to pay the cost of military-directed moves.

Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits Sustain the Post-9/11 GI Bill program to support the readjustment of hundreds of thousands of new veterans as the armed forces cut manpower in the coming years. Support continuation of the transfer-of- benefits authority as a military career incentive. Seek consolidation of all GI bill programs into a simpler, clearer frame- work under veterans’ benefits law. Work to protect GI bill students against preda- tory education practices.

Commissaries and exchanges Protect against privatization, consolida- tion, reduction in services, or elimina- tion efforts in commissary and exchange programs. Sustain funding support, and guard against diminution of this substan- tial benefit for active duty, reserve, and retired servicemembers and their fami- lies and survivors.

Dependent education Protect DoD dependent schools, ensure full funding of Impact Aid for public schools with significant populations of military children, and work to establish an identifier for military children in edu- cation data systems.

Spousal employment Seek expansion of spousal employment opportunities, including incentives for employers and contractors to hire mili- tary spouses. Pursue tax credits or other support means for military spouses to obtain licenses or certifications required as a result of military relocations. Con- tinue to advocate at the state level for legislation — and ensure implementation of the enacted laws — to support military spouse license portability. Encourage re-

maining states to extend unemployment benefits to military spouses forced to re- sign due to military-directed relocations.

Additional Issues

Veterans’ employment and disability Support legislative and executive initiatives to assist veterans’ employment and career goals after separating from military service. Fourteen years of disability claims from Iraq and Afghanistan veterans and appeals of de- nied claims from earlier conflicts continue to threaten the VA’s goal to eliminate the backlog. As a service organization, MOAA will work with leading veterans’ groups to forge recommendations to further upgrade the claims processing and appeals system. MOAA supports recognizing for service- connection Vietnam War-era Agent Orange claims from “blue water” Navy veterans.

Social Security and Medicare reform Resist initiatives that impose dispropor- tionate penalties on particular segments of the beneficiary or taxpayer population or fail to protect long-lived beneficiaries’ in- come from the ravages of inflation.

Social Security Sustaining the future financial viability of Social Security often is portrayed as re- quiring either disproportionate benefit re- ductions or disproportionate tax increases for future generations. Large numbers of older Americans have come to depend on Social Security as an old-age insurance program for which they have paid 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 ben- eficiaries, and no group should be forced to bear disproportionate sacrifice.

JANUARY 2016 MILITARY OFFICER 49