REA 2008 Legislative Agenda
Based on the outcome of the FY08 NDAA and feedback from REA members, the following are areas of focus for the upcoming year:
Reduced Age Retirement
Priority One – Ensure a reduction in retirement age eligibility by three months for every 90 days an RC member spends in support of a future contingency operation includes Reserve Component members who have served since September 11, 2001.
As reservists face longer and more frequent activations, losses of income, missed promotion and career broadening opportunities and fewer contributions towards civilian retirement accounts are all reasons that justify balancing civilian and military careers with a change to military retirements.
REA supports legislation that improves and updates the current Reserve retirement rules. Our ultimate goal is a non-mandated age 55 retirement system for a reservist that does not include a penalty for taking the earlier retirement and includes TRICARE benefits.
Healthcare
- Provide dental care 90 days prior and 180 days post mobilization to ensure service members meet dental readiness standards when DoD facilities are not available close to a reservist’s home
- Ensure Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome and Traumatic Brain Injury treatment is available in areas where reservists live once they return home after mobilization.
Education
- Increase benefit rates to keep up with cost of a four-year education
- Authorize upfront reimbursement of tuition
- Permit individuals to retain the use of education benefits following separation from the Selected Reserve that was the result of force shaping such as BRAC.
BRAC Transition Assistance
- allow priority placement into civil service positions for Reserve Component members and their spouses,
- authorize separation pay,
- continue SGLI for 180 days following a Service member's separation if the separation is due to BRAC or other transformation action that eliminates the member's reserve unit, and
- continuation of Commissary and Exchange Privileges for a two-year period following separation due to BRAC force shaping.
Employment Benefits/Protection
Reservists face the problem of making and keeping themselves attractive to employers. REA will work to have Congress authorize tax credit incentives such to employers that support and employ reservists. REA will also fight to extend USERRA protections to spouses of deployed service members.
December 13, 2007 – REA/ROA Joint Statement
“We are in this fight until it is won.”
A joint statement by the Executive Directors of
The Reserve Officers Association of the United States
and
The Reserve Enlisted Association Outrageous! That is the only word we can think of as we review the Conference Committee Report on this year’s Defense Authorization Act.
Despite a number of positive actions (which are outlined later in this report), the Conference Committee left 600,000 Citizen Warriors in the lurch. The Act will finally contain a provision to allow some Reservists to lower the age at which their retirement pay kicks in. But that provision has been made "prospective," Congress-speak meaning that the service of those mobilized up to now in the Global War on Terrorism does not count toward this earlier retirement eligibility. Outrageous!
Having been directly involved in the mobilization for the Global War on Terror since the day it began more than six years ago, we have heard a lot of speeches extolling the performance of our Citizen Warriors. We have heard just as many speeches about the important role they have played, and the fact that they will remain vital to the success of the All-Volunteer Force. In a very real sense, they have saved the country from a draft.
But this provision--which undoubtedly has the support of many in the DOD leadership-- will call all of that high sounding rhetoric into serious doubt.
Reducing the age at which career reservists can draw their retired pay has been a key objective for many years. It has been based on two essential facts: (1) Reserves are being employed in an entirely different way than they were when the present retirement system was designed; and (2), reduced retirement age was widely seen as a powerful incentive to convince reservists to stay in service for a longer period of time.
We have championed reduced retirement plans that acted as a “force management tool,” specifically rewarding those who served the longest (and the most) with an improved retirement plan. We continued to say: “If you just serve the minimum time, and leave service after 20 years, an age 60 retirement seems fair. But if you stay longer, and serve more, you should be rewarded with an earlier retirement eligibility.”
This year, that concept seemed to catch on. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia sponsored a bill that emulated that philosophy. The bean-counter/budget guys tried to make the case that applying that philosophy to those who had served since 2001 would be too expensive, but Senator Chambliss fought back on the Senate floor, and the “prospective-only” provision was replaced with one that said that eligibility for earlier retirement would be based on service since 1 October 2001. Fair enough.
But somewhere in the murky in-fighting of the Conference Committee, the bean counters were able to re-assert themselves, and the final version now awaiting House and Senate approval is back to “prospective only.” OUTRAGEOUS!
We are not so naïve as to believe that a thousand-page bill will be derailed at this late stage by one Reserve Retirement provision. And we expect that the President will feel compelled to sign it. The Authorization Act is important, and it does have a lot of good provisions. But it is not yet right on Reserve retirement, and ROA and REA will keep fighting to make it right.
We will seek to amend the law immediately in the next session of Congress to remove the “prospective only” provision, and to properly reflect the Nation’s gratitude and admiration for the service of our Citizen Warriors since 2001. Anything less would be a retention disincentive, the last thing we need now.
As a Nation, we must send a message to the men and women of our National Guard and Reserve that says: “We value your service. We want you to stay in service to your Country. We need you to do that so our All Volunteer Force can remain a reality. We don’t want to go back to the draft.”
ROA and REA will carry this message to every Congressional office. We are in this fight until it is won.
