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MILITARY UPDATE

  

            

February 4, 2010

NEW BUDGET: PAY RAISE, HEALTH COSTS, CONCURRENT RECEIPT

By Tom Philpott

The Obama administration proposes to spend three percent more next year on support programs for war-strained military families.  But officials are urging Congress to stop adding extra dollars to the military pay raise every January and find a way to raise TRICARE fees for the first time in 15 years.

In its fiscal 2011 budget request, the White House also is repeating its call that Congress phase in "concurrent receipt" – the payment of military retired pay in addition to disability compensation – for 103,000 veterans who were forced by medical conditions to retire short of  20 years’ service.

Just like last year, however, the administration hasn’t identified “offsets” to other entitlements to be able to pay for expansion of concurrent receipt.  This has left Rep. Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, “greatly disappointed.” Without help from the White House to find funding, Skelton said, the While House proposal will again violate “pay-as-you-go” budget rules and won’t be able to be enacted.

Here are highlights from the budget’s release and follow-on hearings:

PAY RAISE – The administration requests a 1.4 percent military basic pay raise for next January to match average wage growth in the private sector as measured by the government’s Employment Cost Index (ECI).

By law, military raises are to match year-to-year change in the ECI.  However, for the last 12 years Congress has suspended the formula, setting military pay increases at least half percentage point above ECI.  This was to close a pay gap with civilians that, in the late 1990s, stood at 13.5 percent.

Defense officials argue the “pay gap” is gone if one counts hefty increases in basic allowance for housing (BAH) over the past decade.  When total compensation is compared, say pay officials, most military members earn more than civilian peers of similar age and education level.

But Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.) still pressed to close the pay gap at an armed services committee hearing Wednesday, asking Defense Secretary Robert Gates why the requested raise for 2011 doesn’t continue the pattern of ECI-plus-a-half percent to keep closing the remaining 2.4 percent gap.

  “Nobody cares more about our troops than we do,” Gates said, sitting beside Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  Gates said there was a “lot of money” in the budget to improve childcare and housing and to begin to overhaul Department of Defense schools.

“But the [extra] pay increases, along with health care [costs] are beginning to eat us alive.  And…we have to be realistic about this.  If you look at the economy today, and the unemployment rate, the pay for our troops, at all levels, is very competitive,” Gates said....

Read more at: Military. COM or FRA.org

 

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