***** (*Editors Note | Perhaps the soldiers being deployed to fight in Iraq should reconsider. We have a President that doesn't believe they should be compensated for disabilities. Every other government employee upon retirement can receive their retirement pay and disability if they qualify. Only the military has to choose one or the other. George w. Bush can find billions for new weapons programs but cant find money to compensate disabled veterans. Yet another case of misguided priorities. -- sg)
Bush Threatens Veto of Defense Bill President Wants Costly New Disabled Military Pension Benefits Eliminated
By Vernon Loeb Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 7, 2002; Page A02
Alarmed by the cost of expanding military entitlement programs, President Bush has threatened to veto the $355 billion defense authorization bill for the new fiscal year if House and Senate conferees do not eliminate new pension benefits for disabled military retirees that could cost from $18.5 billion to $58 billion over the next decade.
"We simply cannot continue to add ever-expansive obligations to the defense budget," Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said in a letter to the conferees, who could decide the issue this week. "This would divert critical resources away from the war on terrorism, the transformation of our military capabilities and important personnel programs such as pay raises and facilities improvements."
The Pentagon spends in excess of $35 billion a year -- approximately the military budget of France -- on military pension and health care entitlements that are among the most generous in the country for public- or private-sector employees. With the new pension program, the defense budget would become one of the federal government's fastest-growing entitlements.
The pension provision would for the first time allow military retirees to collect retirement benefits from the Pentagon and disability benefits from the Veterans Administration at the same time. Proponents call this "concurrent receipt." Some critics use another term -- "double dipping." Under the law, a military retiree's pension benefits must be reduced, dollar for dollar, by the amount of disability benefits received from the VA.
The House-passed version applies only to military retirees who are considered 60 percent disabled or more by the VA, and it would cost $18.5 billion over the next 10 years. The Senate version applied to virtually all military retirees receiving VA disability compensation and would cost $58 billion over the same period.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), one of the conferees, said Friday that overwhelming majorities in both houses passed a version of the "concurrent receipt" provision out of basic fairness. Disabled veterans should be able to receive military retirement benefits and VA disability benefits without an offset, he said, because retirement pay is for length of service and disability compensation is for pain and suffering incurred in uniform.
Although McCain supports the Senate's expansive version, one compromise discussed by conferees to get around a presidential veto, he said, would be to limit "concurrent receipt" only to combat-injured military retirees, greatly reducing the cost of either House or Senate version.
"No other category of federal employee," said Bob Manhan, assistant director of the Veterans of Foreign Wars legislative office, "is required to relinquish a portion of their earned retirement pay simply because they are also receiving VA disability compensation."
But David S.C. Chu, undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said VA disability compensation is intended, not to supplement military pensions, but to compensate disabled veterans who leave the military after a few years' service and do not qualify for full military pensions.
Military retirees with disabilities who qualify for pensions, Chu said, are more than adequately compensated without VA benefits. Their pension benefits are already among the most generous in the United States and fully indexed annually for inflation. Military retirees also receive lifetime health care and other benefits, he said.
"The bottom line is, we don't see the problem for which $58 billion of the taxpayers' money over the next 10 years is required to solve," Chu said.
There is no question, he added, that allowing disabled veterans to concurrently receive retirement and disability pay will take money from weapons procurement and other accounts intended to benefit active-duty personnel.
"We're going to rob Peter to pay Paul," he said, "and the question is, should Peter really lose here?"
Enactment of a "concurrent receipt" provision would come on top of legislation Congress passed in 2000 extending lifetime health and prescription benefits under the military's Tricare health insurance system to 1.4 million uniformed service retirees age 65 and older and family members and survivors.
The new benefits, which set military retirees well apart from other senior citizens, cost $3.9 billion last fiscal year. This year, the cost jumps to $8 billion in Pentagon contributions to a fund designed to pay for the added health benefits on an accrual basis.
In testimony in May before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld said the total cost of military health care, including the new lifetime health and prescription benefits for the elderly, would be a "breathtaking" $22.8 billion this year, more than Italy's defense budget.
"The hard truth is that this line item promises to grow and put pressure on all other categories of the budget -- research and development, modernization, transformation, pay and the like," Rumsfeld said. "We need to face up to it."
A year before passing lifetime health care and prescription benefits for military retirees, Congress repealed a pension reform act passed in 1986 that reduced pension benefits for those entering military service after Aug. 1, 1986, from 50 percent to 40 percent of final pay after 20 years. The cost of that repeal adds an additional $1.1 billion to this year's defense budget.
Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan organization that advocates fiscal responsibility and lobbies for Social Security, said Congress's willingness to increase benefits for disabled veterans is "part of a pattern" that began with the pension reform repeal and continued with passage of lifetime health care and prescription benefits.
"When the budget surpluses started happening, politicians stopped thinking in terms of hard choices and started expanding entitlements," Bixby said. "Now we're back into deficits, but nobody has scaled back their desire to expand entitlements they developed in the days of surpluses."
This is particularly true when it comes to the military, he said. "The military is in a favored environment right now because we're in a war setting," he said. "Anything in the military gets a pass, whether it's related to the war or not."
In a report last month, the General Accounting Office concluded in a study on Pentagon benefits that military personnel get all the retirement, health and employment benefits as private-sector employees -- and more, particularly after a series of recent enhancements designed to improve retention rates.
"These include free health care for members, free housing or housing allowances and discount shopping at commissaries and exchanges," the GAO said. "Major enhancements to benefits included the restoration of retirement benefits that had been cut for military service members who entered military service on or after August 1, 1986, and increases in the basic housing allowance to reduce out-of-pocket housing expenses for service members not living in military housing."
Pay has also been substantially improved. "Congress approved across-the-board pay raises of 4.8 percent for fiscal year 2000 and 3.7 percent for fiscal year 2001, along with targeted pay raises to mid-level officers and enlisted personnel," the GAO said. "For fiscal year 2002, Congress approved pay raises ranging between 5 and 10 percent, depending on pay grade and years of service."
<http://truthout.com/docs_02/10.09B.bush.veto.htm> *****
***** Gannett News Service November 10, 2002, Sunday HEADLINE: Disabled veterans unsure if Congress remembers its retirement pay promise BYLINE: DENNIS CAMIRE; Gannett News Service DATELINE: WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON -- When House members and senators return Tuesday to begin a lame duck session, veterans will greet them with a simple question: Are they going to continue to make military retirees pay for their service-connected disabilities?
"It's an equity issue," said Norb Ryan, a retired vice admiral and president of The Retired Officers Association.
As part of this year's defense authorization bill, both chambers overwhelmingly passed legislation to change a 111-year-old law that forces disabled military retirees to give up a dollar of their armed services' retirement pay for every dollar they receive in disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"I think it's really sorry, said Wiley Smith, an 84-year-old survivor of World War II's Bataan Death March now living in Bossier City, La. "I feel like they are cheating me. It just isn't fair. It just isn't right." Wiley, who retired as an Air Force master sergeant after 22 years, didn't complain about his nearly four years as a prisoner of war with broken bones and malnutrition. He remained loyal to his country and was proud to serve. But now, as he claims 100 percent disability for his injuries, he can't understand why the government doesn't show him the same loyalty.
But top defense officials and Bush administration advisers object to the law's change, saying the cost would jeopardize national defense priorities. They said they will recommend the president veto this year's defense authorization bill if it allows the retirees to keep both their full disability and military retirement pay.
The House-approved measure, co-sponsored by 402 of its 435 members, would eliminate the pay forfeiture for retirees 60 percent or more disabled at a cost of $ 18.5 billion in the next decade. The Senate-passed bill -- co-sponsored by 83 of the 100 senators -- would eliminate the forfeiture entirely at a cost of about $ 58 billion over 10 years.
The path seemed cleared for House and Senate negotiators to work out a deal even with a veto threat, especially after the House voted 391-0 shortly before leaving for its election recess to approve a nonbinding resolution to adopt the Senate position.
That was before election politics entered the fray.
Compromise talks stop
Shortly before the congressional recess, the House Republican leadership, apparently not wanting to hand President Bush a defeat so soon before the elections, refused further negotiations on the defense authorization bill.
The House Armed Services Committee has no new meetings between negotiators set up so far for the lame duck session.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it became clear in the week before recess that the House leadership would not allow its negotiators to agree to the House or Senate provisions on retirement pay before the elections.
Without White House objection, the authorization bill would have been completed, he said.
"There is simply too much legislation critical to our national security in this bill, including important legislation concerning pay and benefits for our troops for Congress not to complete action on it," said Levin, also chairman of the negotiating committee on the legislation.
But Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., a House Armed Services Committee member, said he was concerned that House members who voted to change the law before the elections now might not hold to that position.
"I think they ought to act the same way after an election," said Taylor, a sponsor of the resolution to adopt the Senate provision. "I know I was serious, so the question is, 'Were they serious?'"
Because campaigns are over, veterans groups are concerned that lawmakers will adjourn for the year without dealing with the problem. That would put the pay issue back at square one in January.
"There are a lot of bills still left undone. And the defense authorization, I'm a little concerned, might end up being less than a priority," said Kim Vockel, legislative affairs director for the Non Commissioned Officers Association.
Not in the budget
Ronald F. Conley, national commander of the American Legion, said the objections of the president's advisers sends a bad signal to service members: "Don't get wounded, don't get shot and don't get ill because we didn't budget for it."
Some Bush administration officials are stonewalling disabled veterans, said Billy M. Thomas, a retired Army lieutenant general and president of the Uniformed Services Disabled Retirees.
"It's time for the president to act," he said.
Mike Jordan, deputy director of government relations for The Retired Officers Association, said the issue needs to be decided now -- before both chambers become GOP majorities.
"Obviously, if you have a Republican House and a Republican Senate, both will be more sympathetic to the administration," he said.
But Jordan said he was confident of a solution. Among the options would be to cover:
-- Only those 60 percent or more disabled, the House solution. -- Military retirees disabled only in combat. -- The most severely disabled, giving them a special pay boost.
Another scenario: Take the retirement pay issue out of the defense authorization bill and deal with it alone, Jordan said.
"We hope they will keep the provisions in the defense bill," he said. "There is the expectation among the vast majority of military retirees and others in the veterans community that now is the time. If nothing happens, that is a serious problem."
Military retirees believe the Bush administration's opposition to changing the law is a slap in the face after years of sacrifice and service, said Steve dePyssler, a retired Air Force colonel and director of the retiree activities office at Barksdale Air Force Base, La.
"What grates the retiree most is that if you are a government employee, you get both benefits. If you are a civilian, you get both," he said. "That's because retirement and disability are two different things. It's only the military retiree that is being denied and discriminated against." ***** -- Yoshie
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