House-Senate conferees negotiating final details on a fiscal 2010 defense authorization bill Tuesday rolled back fee increases charged to Tricare Standard beneficiaries for stays in civilian hospitals.
The surprise increases, reported here last week, gave lawmakers a chance to ride to the rescue. The decision puts a cherry atop the $680.2 billion defense policy bill, at least for working-age military retirees and their families, who would have seen a $110-a-day bump in hospital bills.
That was a fortuitous opportunity for the Armed Services committees because other pay and benefit initiatives in the bill are relatively modest compared with past years. And the gains are dampened by some too-familiar legislative disappointments for service members, veterans and their families.
One new disappointment is that the Democratic-led Congress couldn’t find money to support President Barack Obama’s call to phase in pay boosts for disabled retirees who are forced by ailments or injuries to leave the service before completing the 20 years of service.
His plan would have boosted the pay of 103,000 retirees at a cost of $5.4 billion over 10 years. The House alone had voted to take the first step, using dollars freed up from an energy appropriation, to expand pay for retirees with fewer than 20 years and disability ratings of 90 to 100 percent.
But Senate conferees concluded it would violate Senate budget rules to take even a first step in Obama’s phase-in plan without proper funding.
The principle behind the extra pay is that the Department of Defense should pay retirees an annuity for total years served and Veterans Affairs should fully compensate them for their disabilities.
For many thousands of disabled retirees, their retired pay still is reduced by the amount of their disability compensation.
Obama promised in his presidential campaign to get rid of the reduction for all disabled military retirees. But White House budget officials were stunned to learn the cost — $45 billion over 10 years — and so lowered their first-term target to the smaller group with more serious disabilities, an unpopular compromise.
House-Senate Conferees also rejected two familiar Senate-passed initiatives as unfunded. One would have ended a reduction in survivor benefit payments to 54,000 widows who also draw dependency and indemnity compensation from the VA.
The other provision tossed would have made 140,000 more reservists mobilized since Sept. 11, 2001, eligible for earlier reserve retirement. In 2007, Congress had lowered the age-60 start of reserve retired pay by three months for every 90 consecutive days that reserve or guard members are called up for war or national emergency, if they otherwise qualify for retirement.
For lack of funds, Congress made the change applicable only for deployment time after Jan. 28, 2008. That restriction will remain.
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