As it came to a close, 2013 seemed to have left a kind of high water mark on the wall of more than a decade of steady, impressive gains to military and veterans’ pays and benefits.
The military this month is getting its smallest annual pay raise in 50 years, 1 percent versus 1.8 percent needed to match private sector wages. No big deal, pay officials contend. Military pay still exceeds earnings for 90 percent of civilians of like age and education level. Also, recruiting is strong and average housing allowances rose 5 percent Jan. 1.
Military careerists and younger retirees got a harder hit in December when the first bipartisan budget in years included a cap on annual cost-of-living adjustments for retirees below age 62, starting in January 2016.
Projected savings, $6.3 billion over just the first decade, helped Congress to ease automatic defense spending cuts set for 2014 and 2015. But advocates for military folks worry that lawmakers no longer view military compensation promises as sacrosanct.
“Contrary to public assertions from the president, the chairman of the joint chiefs, (Defense Secretary Chuck) Hagel and leaders on Capitol Hill, this retirement cut is a hit on currently serving career members,” said retired Army Col. Robert F. Norton of Military Officers Association of America.
Initially praised for shaping a modest budget deal on deadline, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the budget committee chairmen, saw their package swiftly enacted before lawmakers realized the military COLA cap would spark protests.
Worried lawmakers immediately held press conferences, sponsored rollback bills or issued press releases promising to replace the COLA cap with an alternative budget saving idea.
Even Ryan and Murray agreed the cap at least should be modified before it takes effect in 2016 to spare 100,000 veterans who have been medically retired by their branch of service.
Veterans affairs committees also came up short in 2013. Most years, around Veterans’ Day, Congress has passed a new package of initiatives to strengthen veteran benefits and services. In 2013, the only noteworthy law enacted was no bigger, literally, than a rounding error.
When a veterans’ COLA of 1.5 percent took effect Dec. 1, compensation charts showed cents as well dollars, a gesture that added an average 49 cents to monthly payments.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, had hoped to achieve more. On Dec. 18, he tried to get the full Senate to approve a mammoth package of new benefits and services for veterans and surviving spouses.
Then Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) put a hold on the bill.
One more expansion of veterans’ health and education services can’t be justified, Coburn said, given that the Department of Veterans Affairs can’t administer all benefits previously enacted or keep all past promises made to veterans and their families.
He also argued the bill isn’t fully paid for with budget offsets elsewhere. And some offsets identified won’t save money for years while near-term VA spending, already up 58 percent since 2009, would climb by at least another $77 million and “likely much more,” he said.
“At a time of runaway deficits and a crippling national debt, it is inappropriate to add even one dime to our national debt,” Coburn added.
One key initiative of the bill would force states to grant in-state tuition at state-run colleges and universities to recently separated veterans using GI Bill education benefits, a move Coburn sees as violating state rights.
Other provisions would boost Dependency and Indemnity Compensation to surviving spouses if they have children; extend official “veteran” status to Reserve and National Guard retirees and expand the Marine Gunnery Sergeant John David Fry Scholarship to include surviving spouses.
The Fry program already provides Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to cover four years at state colleges for every child of service members who die “in the line of duty.”
Joseph Violante, legislative director of Disabled American Veterans, said lack of any major veterans’ legislation in 2013 should be blamed on a dysfunctional Congress, which passed “very little legislation” at all.
The House, as well as Coburn, must agree to any new gains. Coburn seems set against, even pointing to “needless” recent deaths of three veterans at the VA hospital in Augusta, for lack of timely, promised care.
“It is shameful for Congress to claim credit for providing new benefits while old promises are forgotten” and “heroes” die as a result, Coburn wrote.
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