washingtonscene
check on the arrival of the tear-out letters in- cluded with February’s Military Officer. By early March, the committee had received thousands of MOAA members’ letters (see photo, left). The committee staff has
told MOAA many times these letters do make a difference. A few years ago, MOAA addressed the tear-out letters to Budget
Tear-out letters from MOAA members are shown at a House Armed Services Committee meeting March 8, 2016.
Committee leaders instead, only to have the Armed Services Committee staff sug- gest we go back to sending letters to their committee because they help leadership understand beneficiary interests. MOAA uses the February and March magazines to carry the tear-out letters and post cards because it can take about four weeks for them to start arriving on the Hill — about the same time the House Committee usually starts preparing the Defense Authorization Bill. Thank you for mailing in your tear-out letters. You are making a difference.
Lawmaker Blasts
Pay-Cap Plan A military pay-raise proposal meets opposition.
A 38 MILITARY OFFICER MAY 2016
t a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Military Personnel Subcommittee Chair
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told service chiefs he’s not happy DoD is proposing yet another reduced military pay raise for 2017. “For the last three years, this administra- tion has failed to allow servicemembers’ pay to keep up with the private-sector wage growth,” Graham said. “This is the
fourth year in a row where the department is shortchanging servicemembers.” DoD is touting the proposed 1.6-per-
cent pay raise as the largest raise in the past four years. However, it still is below the average American’s 2.1-percent raise, as measured by the Employment Cost Index. If Congress doesn’t reject the Pen- tagon proposal, the cumulative four-year pay gap will increase to 3.1 percent. Graham also took issue with the Penta-
gon’s proposal to make changes to the new blended retirement system scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2018, for new entrants. Under current law, the new system cuts military retired pay by 20 percent but provides up to a 5-percent government match to servicemembers’ deposits in fed- eral Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) accounts. Government matching begins when a servicemember reaches three years of service. DoD’s budget proposes delaying government matching until the fifth year of service. This proposal directly counters one of the main reasons why Congress originally approved the change to retirement: to pro- vide a retirement benefit to more service- members, especially the majority who do not stay for 20 years. “Let me be clear,” Graham said. “It is
our commitment to the many servicemem- bers who go out on deployment before reaching their fifth year of service that they, too, have earned some retirement.” MOAA agrees with Graham’s concern on both the military pay-raise and TSP- matching issues.
MO
— Contributors are Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF (Ret), director; Col. Mike Barron, USA (Ret); Col. Bob Norton, USA (Ret); Capt. Kathy Beasley, USN (Ret); Col. Phil Odom, USAF (Ret); Cmdr. René Campos, USN (Ret); Brooke Goldberg; Jamie Naughton; and Trina Fitzgerald, MOAA’s Govern- ment Relations Department. Visit
www.moaa.org/ email to sign up for legislative-news updates.
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