Active-duty and reserve- component members are closer to landing a 3.4 percent basic pay raise in January, which would be the 11th consecutive annual increase set higher than private-sector wage growth.
But in approving a $550.4 billion fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill and $130 billion for wartime operations Wednesday, the House Armed Services Committee couldn’t find money to support President Barack Obama’s plan to extend the right to collect both retirement and disability pay to 103,000 additional people.
Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., committee chairman, said some funds still might be found before the defense bill reaches the House floor, where final amendments will be offered.
The target of Obama’s plan are people forced by disabilities to retire from service before they completed the 20 years of service needed to earn regular military retirement. Today they receive either military disability retirement or VA disability compensation. Obama’s plan would allow many of them also to receive an annuity based on years served.
The cost would be $5.1 billion over 10 years but the greater difficulty for the committee was finding the right type of funding, explained Skelton. The president’s plan, in effect, would enhance an entitlement, which means mandatory spending. That is, by law, it would have to be funded every year.
Under the House “pay-as-you-go” budget rule, no mandatory spending initiative can be approved unless a matching amount of mandatory spending reductions are made elsewhere in the budget.
As the full committee began to review the personnel portion of the defense bill, Rep. Susan Davis., D-Calif., personnel subcommittee chair, announced with regret that Obama’s provision was not included because no mandatory offsets had been found.
In the meantime, Skelton explained, any amendment introduced during mark-up that requires mandatory spending would be ruled out of order unless offsets to pay for it were identified.
Undeterred, Rep. Joe Wilson. S.C., ranking Republican on the personnel subcommittee, introduced a four-part amendment full of unfunded mandatory spending initiatives, including one to restore Obama’s initiative.
A second called for an end to what’s called the widows’ tax for surviving military spouses. Surviving spouses of service members who die on active duty or from service-related conditions can receive tax-free compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs, but they must agree to accept a dollar-for-dollar reduction in their survivor benefits.
Several members of Gold Star Wives of America sat through the mark-up all day, hoping to see the issue be debated. Sandra Drew, widow of an Air Force colonel who died in Bosnia in 1995, was the only one left when, in the mark-up’s 13th hour, Wilson proposed an end to the offset.
Drew said she could feel the unease among Democrats and saw “a lot of squirming going on” as they tabled Wilson’s amendments. Skelton said some offsets soon might be found but the amount of dollars would be modest, just a fraction of what Wilson’s amendments required.
Republicans tried to paint committee Democrats as rigid adherents to rules intended to slow expansion of deserved entitlements. Democrats countered that Republicans were trying to score political points, having used the same rules themselves when they were the majority party.
Drew said she was disappointed, but would sit through a defense bill mark-up again if it influenced lawmakers to address the pay offset for widows.
“I know more about intercontinental ballistic missiles now than I ever did before, and will use it for dinner table conversation,” she added.
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