TREA Washington Update for July 23, 2010
It was a very busy week in Washington. The President signed the finance reform bill. The Prime Minister came to town. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination of Elena Kagan to be an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court and sent it to the Senate floor.
1) Chapter 61 (Medical Retirees) Provision Stripped From Unemployment Bill. But All Is Not Lost
2) TREA Meets With Senate Democratic Leadership
3) The Start Of DoD Career Benefit Cuts? Looks Like It
4) Senate Hearing Regarding 9/11 GI Bill Improvement Act
5) Way Forward For The War Supplemental (HR4899)
6) GAO Report on TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS)
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1) Chapter 61 (Medical Retirees) Provision Stripped From Unemployment Bill But All Is Not Lost-After months of working and waiting, on Wednesday the Senate stripped the provision granting Medical Retirees with 100% or 90% disabilities, who do not qualify for CRSC, the ability to receive both their retired pay and their VA disability pay, from the unemployment insurance extension bill (HR4213). They then passed the Unemployment extension bill and sent it back to the House of Representatives. The House then passed the bill and sent it on to the President. While the fundamental argument over the Unemployment provision was whether it would be offset by other money (mainly money from the 2009 Stimulus law (PL 111-5) or added to the deficit-our provision (and several other stripped provisions) all had offsets and provisions).
However all is not lost. The original provision was championed by Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Ike Skelton. Not only is he the Chairman of the Committee of Jurisdiction; he also found the offset to pay for the section. So we still have a crucial supporter. The most likely next step is to include it in the FY2011 NDAA. Nothing is ever easy.
2) TREA Meets With Senate Democratic Leadership-On Wednesday morning TREA National Director and Chairman of TREA’s Legislative Committee Arthur Cooper and Washington Executive Director Deirdre Parke Holleman participated in a meeting with Senate’s Democratic members and representatives of several VSO’s called to discuss concerns of military veterans and retirees. It was an amazing turnout of Senators- more than twice the number of represented organizations. The meeting was organized by the Senate Democratic Steering Committee and chaired by Majority Leader Reid (D-NV) and Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Also there were Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Daniel Akaka (D-HI) Chairman of the Senate Committee of Veterans Affairs and Senators Klobuchar (D-MN), Franken (D-MN), Burris (D-IL), Pryor (D-AR), Durbin (D-MI), Boxer (D-CA), Warner (D-VA), Begich (D-AK), Tester (D-MT), Bennet (D-CO), Hagan (D-NC), McCaskill (D-MO), Kaufman (D-DE), Merkley (D-OR), Reed (DRI), Sanders (I-VT), Shaheen (D-NH), Udall (D-NM). We talked about the need to improve veteran, retiree, and their families’ health care, education and employment needs. We also discussed now important it was to improve the VA’s disability adjudication process, the special needs of women vets, the urgent requirements for Congressional oversight of the VA and DoD after they pass new and improved programs to make sure they are stood up quick and fairly and much more. It was an extremely impressive showing of Senators who came, stayed and listened to us during this incredibly busy time.
3) The Start of DoD Career Benefit Cuts? Looks Like It.-This week DoD announced the resumption of the “Military Spouse Career Advancement Account” program; called MyCAA for short. The new and very popular program was suddenly and without warning stopped in February. It will start again on October 25 at 8:00 a.m. EDT. The program was created to help military spouses of the active duty to train for careers that they could carry with them as they make the repeated moves required by their spouses’ military career. It has now been massively limited to save money by both cutting the amount available for tuition and by limiting the spouses who qualify for the program. For enlisted personnel only the spouses of service members who are in Pay Grades E-1 to E-5 will now qualify for this program. This effectively means that the spouses of most service members who are serving a career in the services will de disqualified.
This looks like the first step in cutting the benefits for the men and women who intend to serve a career in the military. It is an easy target since it is a very new program that many people do not even know about and do not have an investment in. But these changes will seriously disadvantage our future members’ families and may very well be a sign of things to come.
The new program also cuts the total tuition aid an applicant can receive to $4,000 (down from the present $6,000), allows them to spend only $2,000 a year (there is a waiver process for this limitation), and has a 3 year time limitation to use the funding and now can be used only to earn associate degrees, licenses or certification. Presently 136,583 spouses are enrolled in the program; the changes will disqualify 73,891 of them.
4) Senate Hearing Regarding 9/11 GI Bill Improvement Act-TREA, represented by Arthur Cooper, National Director and Chairman of the Legislative Affairs Committee, Executive Director Deirdre Holleman and Deputy Legislative Director Mike Saunders, attended a hearing about proposed improvements to the post-9/11 GI Bill. The hearing, called by Senator Daniel Akaka (D–HI) to discuss his bill S3447, was held by the Senate Veteran Affairs Committee. Keith Wilson, Director of Education Services and the top education official for the Veterans Affairs Department asked Congress to delay any significant changes or improvements to the Post-9/11 GI Bill until August 1, 2011.
Mr. Wilson said that Congress can pass the changes now, but delaying the effective date of any such changes would avoid interference with the rollout of a new computer system that will streamline eligibility decisions and the calculation of benefits.
“VA is working aggressively on a new payment system to support the existing Post-9/11 GI Bill provisions,” Wilson told the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee on Thursday. Making changes, especially to eligibility criteria, could delay a solution to the claims processing problems, he said.
However, postponing implementation of S3447, the Post 9/11 GI Bill Improvements Act, would delay the ability of National Guard and Reserve members to earn Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits by ensuring that time spent on active duty in full time support of the Guard and Reserve, as well as military service in support of federally declared national emergencies, is counted toward the time in service eligibility requirements for the new GI Bill. This is not the case under the current version of the Post 9/11 GI Bill.
The Senate bill also would make active duty service members and spouses of active duty service members using transferred benefits eligible for the $1,000 annual book allowance that goes to other student-veterans and would expand the GI Bill to pay for vocational and flight training, correspondence classes, apprenticeships and other on-the-job training programs.
Mr. Wilson said VA supports these changes, as long as Congress finds a way to pay for the added costs and is willing to make some technical changes in the legislation to avoid potential problems. He said the Obama Administration is withholding support for many provisions of the bill until it has a better idea of the cost, and how lawmakers propose to pay for any improvements.
5) Way Forward for the War Supplemental (HR4899)-It looks like the War Supplemental will be moving forward before Congress’ August break. (Though until it happens don’t bet the ranch.) Late last night, on a procedural vote, the Senate rejected the House of Representative’s version of the War Supplemental which included an additional $22 billion in domestic spending and returned its $58.8 billion version (which only covers costs for the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, veterans programs and disaster relief) of the bill to the House. It was the House proposed spending on numerous domestic programs (primarily $10 billion in aid to keep school teachers on the payroll) that caused the month long deadlock in the Senate and a veto threat from the White House.
This week Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Representative Ike Skelton (D-MO) wrote a letter (which he released to the public) urging Senate Majority Leader Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) to quickly present a War Supplemental that “can obtain broad bipartisan support” in the Senate. At a Wednesday meeting of VSO representatives with the Senate Democratic Leadership (please see above) there were attempts by various Senators to make some changes or additions to the Senate bill but they all failed.
Many of the rejected spending provisions are a top priorities for Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) and Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee Rep. David Obey (D-WI) Both the House Democratic leadership and rank-and file House Democratic members have said that it is urgent to keep teachers around the country on staff, have summer job programs and numerous other domestic causes. Some members are still trying to include them in the War Supplemental while other Democratic leaders have urged their colleagues to find another vehicle to use to deal those programs. It is expected that the House will pass the Senate’s version but time will tell.
6) GAO Report on TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS)-Last week Deirdre Parke Holleman was interviewed by 3 GAO researchers concerning a report they are writing for Congress. The report is focused on the outreach, education, publicity and usefulness of TRICARE Reserve Select (TRS). Congress wants to know if beneficiaries were finding it hard to find caregivers who will take TRS; if members of the Guard and Reserve and their families are told enough about the program; if members have even heard of the program and what can be done to increase the number of Guard and Reserve members that are taking advantage of this first rate benefit. We discussed (even though it was not part of their directive) the serious and unacceptable delays faced by members waiting for the roll out of the next step in Guard and Reserve health care- TRICARE Reserve Retirees (TRR) as well as many other experiences. If you have any stories or experiences that you think could be useful in analyzing this program please e-mail us with your thoughts.
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