washingtonscene
LEGISLATIVE NEWS THAT AFFECTS YOU History Repeats
The administration’s FY 2017 budget once again includes proposals to shift more DoD costs to servicemembers, military retirees, and military families, targeting TRICARE, pay, and commissaries.
T
he administration’s FY 2017 budget request, unveiled Feb. 9, is strikingly similar to its budget
proposal last year and once again calls for higher TRICARE fees, a reduced military pay raise, and commissary funding cuts. Health care: The DoD budget proposes a wide array of health care changes — in- cluding new fees and increases to existing ones — that would affect virtually all ben- eficiaries except active duty troops. (See more specifics in “TRICARE Reform or Fee Increases?” on page 34.) Military pay and retirement:Under the DoD budget proposal, servicemembers would have their pay raise capped below the statutory standard for the fourth year in a row. The proposed 1.6-percent raise is 0.5 percentage points below the average American’s 2.1-percent raise, as measured by the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employ- ment Cost Index. The proposed cap further expands to 3.1 percent the cumulative four- year gap between military and private- sector raises. The budget touts this as “the largest raise in four years,” but each of the past seven military raises has been lower than any raise during the previous 48 years. The budget also proposes adjustments to the new blended retirement system that will take effect for new service entrants starting in 2018. The system will cut mili- tary retired pay for this group by 20 percent to provide up to a 5-percent government match to federal Thrift Savings Plan ac- counts held by servicemembers.
Under current law, government match- ing begins when a servicemember reaches three years of service. DoD proposes de- laying government matching until the fifth year of service. The budget also proposes extending until retirement the govern- ment match — which will stop at 26 years under current law — and increasing the total government matching potential to 6 percent of basic pay. MOAA supports improving the match
and extending it for the full career, but we’re not in favor of delaying the match for junior servicemembers. Commissaries: A surprising proposal
was a $221 million cut to commissary funding. Last year, the administration proposed cutting $300 million as the first step toward privatizing commissaries. After Congress restored the funding, ad- ministration officials agreed the benefit needs to be preserved and they will ac- cept whatever level of savings might be realized through business efficiencies without reducing the benefit. “To us, that’s inconsistent with propos-
ing a $221 million cut,” says MOAA Presi- dent Lt. Gen. Dana Atkins, USAF (Ret). “Without context, that seems considerably more than any efficiencies could be ex- pected to generate in one year.” MOAA will push to ensure commissary
funding remains at a level consistent with reasonable expectations of system effi- ciency improvements that won’t affect the value of the benefit.
APRIL 2016 MILITARY OFFICER 33
Storming the Hill On April 13, MOAA coun- cil and chapter leaders from all 50 states will storm Capitol Hill to urge congressional support of key legislative issues. Learn more about the ef- fort and issues at www
.moaa.org/storming.
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