WATCHING WASHINGTON

Every year Congress appropriates money and makes decisions that determine (among other things) the quality of housing we live in, the places we can be assigned to, whether or not our husbands will be going overseas and under what conditions we can accompany them, the perimeters of our health care benefits, and the amount of support, recreation, and day-care services that will be offered on-post.

By contrast, civilian lives are not micro managed by law-making the way we are in the military community.  Every aspect of our lives are impacted by the decisions being made by the President and by Congress and those decisions are dynamic, ever-changing, and, most importantly, can be influenced.   MSC will watch what is happening in Washington and help keep you informed.

Remember, what happens in Washington does affect you...

To view current legislation, please see our page on Legislation of Interest

TIPS FOR CALLING:

1. Call only the Congressperson in your District and the Senators in your state.
2. Tell them you are a registered voter in their District and/or State.
3. The legislative staff in these offices DO document all calls and letters from constituents. The theory is that a person who is motivated enough to find out who their elected official is and motivated enough to call or write is motivated enough to vote at the next election, so they DO keep track of who is contacting the office and why.
4. Contrary to what you may be told, it does not help to contact other Congress people or Senators in other Districts or States.
5. When calling for military legislative issues, call the DC office and specifically ask for their Senators/Reps MLA (Military Legislative Assistant). MLA's are only in the DC offices and they are the ones that handle military issues and legislation.

(Click here to find out who your elected officials in DC are.)

A TRULY Comprehensive GI Bill

(Apr. 15, 2008) Senators Webb and Hagel have introduced the Post-9/11 Veterans' Educational Assistance Act (S22) to replace the existing GI Bill. S22 would increase educational benefits for service members to cover the entire cost of full-time in-state tuition as well as provide a monthly allowance for housing and a yearly stipend for books.

In order to fully appreciate why so many veterans and their advocates are dissatisfied with the existing educational benefits for military service, and why they support S22, you have to understand the history and purpose of earlier GI Bills.  The first GI Bill was created by Congress in 1944 to help combat veterans successfully readjust to civilian life after returning from war.  Congress provided veterans with a variety of benefits, including educational assistance, home loan guaranties, and unemployment pay.  Although the original GI Bill expired in 1952, a new GI Bill was created, funded, and implemented for every military conflict following World War II.

The current GI Bill, and the basis for educational assistance today, was enacted in 1985 and is known as the Montgomery GI Bill ("MGIB").  Unlike previous GI Bills, the MGIB was created as an incentive program to maintain an all volunteer military force.  As a result, there are significant differences between the original GI Bill and the MGIB.
 
Under the MGIB, service members are not automatically eligible for benefits (although they have to affirmatively elect NOT to "buy-in" to the program), nor are all the costs of college attendance covered. In fact, the original GI Bill not only paid for the cost and tuition of attending the college of the veterans choice, it also provided a stipend to live off of while enrolled.

By contrast, today's maximum MGIB benefits only covers 60 to 75 percent of the tuition at a state college. Although 97 percent of today's service members sign up for the MGIB when they enlist, only 8 percent of service members used all of their educational benefits (over the past ten years) and 30 percent failed to use any of their benefits at all.
 
Supporters of the 21st Century GI Bill argue that the peacetime goals (e.g., force maintenance instead of veteran readjustment) of the MGIB fails to acknowledge the needs and sacrifices of our OEF/OIF wartime veterans.  Moreover, since Congress has created a comprehensive GI Bill for every war since (and including) WWII, they should do the same for OEF and OIF.  

Last year, Acting Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Manpower and Personnel, Tom Bush, testified before the House Veterans Affairs subcommittee on economic opportunity that “attracting qualified [military] recruits using large, across-the-board basic benefits incurs the risk that many who enter for the [G.I. Bill] benefits will leave as soon as they can use them.”

In supporting the Pentagon's opposition to Webb's proposed expansion to veterans' educational benefits, presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain shared its concern that service members would opt to go to college instead of stay in the military.  Consequently, McCain stated that he and his colleagues in the Senate were working on an alternative version that would expand benefits but add an additional commitment to the military in order to take advantage of those additional benefits.

In my mind, the problem with McCain's vision for expanding the GI Bill is that: a) it is contrary to the spirit of the every other wartime GI Bill; b) it fails to remedy the disparity in educational benefits for current combat veterans vis a vis earlier combat veterans; c) it forces our fighting men and women to decide whether their lives are worth a higher education--which, by the way, the post-Iraq military lifestyle and deployments make difficult to obtain while serving; and d) it turns a benefit into a bribe (well, incentive).

Why can't we value their existing service enough to compensate them accordingly? Why can't we honor that service by fulfilling the promise of access to higher education that was made when they enlisted initially?

©2008 Carissa Picard

Caring for Wounded Warriors

A Wife's Battle:  When Her Soldier Returned From Baghdad, Michelle Turner Picked Up the Burden of War

By Anne Hull and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, October 14, 2007;

ROMNEY, W.Va. -  Michelle Turner's husband sits in the recliner with the shades drawn. He washes down his Zoloft with Mountain Dew. On the phone in the other room, Michelle is pleading with the utility company to keep their power on.

"Can't you tell them I'm a veteran?" asks her husband, Troy, who served as an Army scout in Baghdad and came back with post-traumatic stress disorder.  "Troy, they don't care," Michelle says, her patience stretched.

The government's sweeping list of promises to make wounded Iraq war veterans whole, at least financially, has not reached this small house in the hills of rural West Virginia, where one vehicle has already been repossessed and the answering machine screens for bill collectors. The Turners have not been making it on an $860-a-month disability check from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

After revelations about the poor treatment of outpatient soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center earlier this year, President Bush appointed a commission to study the care of the nation's war-wounded. The panel returned with bold recommendations, including the creation of a national cadre of caseworkers and a complete overhaul of the military's disability system that compensates wounded soldiers.

But so far, little has been done to sort out the mess of bureaucracy or put more money in the hands of newly disabled soldiers who are fending off evictions and foreclosures.

In the Turner house, that leaves an exhausted wife with chipped nail polish to hold up the family's collapsing world. "Stand Together," a banner at a local cafe reminds Michelle. But since Troy came back from Iraq in 2003, the burden of war is now hers... » Read More

"MSC tries to remind our NG and active duty families that they should care very much about how this country tends to its wounded warriors and veterans because the fate of those families today could be the fate of our families tomorrow."  Carissa Picard, President, Military Spouses for Change.

Military Compensation

On June 29th, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) (a federal agency within the legislative branch) issued a report entitled, 'Evaluating Military Compensation.' This report suggests that when all military benefits--from health care to commissary privileges to retirement pay--are taken into consideration, military pay is comparable to civilian pay. As a result, the CBO supports the position of the White House that the 3.5 percent pay raise tentatively being considered by the House of Representatives (in the 2008 Defense appropriations bill) is too high.

In seeking ways to cut military costs, the CBO suggests, among other things, making the housing allowance for single and married soldiers the same. It asserts that this difference creates an 'incentive' to marry. MSC views equalization of this allowance as effectively penalizing marriage and undermining support for the military family.

Lastly, the CBO suggests that the individual soldier be allotted a certain amount of money and be forced to buy the 'benefits' he/she wants to use as a service-member. That way no service-member would be entitled to all the current benefits and privileges of service, such as commissary and PX privileges, CDC sliding scale fees, health care, retirement, etc. And, of course, no service-member could 'buy' all those benefits.

We strongly oppose this plan. We believe our government needs to be finding ways to strengthen military benefits and to read a report that so blatantly encourages finding ways to give our service-members and their families even less than they are already receiving is outrageous.

We urge you to contact your congressional Representative and both Senators (you can find out who they are at www.congress.org) to tell them that you believe a 3.5 percent pay increase is not unreasonable.

In fact, considering the military's concern with retention and recruitment, we think that pay raises should be based upon what our service-members deserve as opposed to comparing their pay to the civilian sector, which really is not comparable at all.  The civilian sector DOES NOT make the demands on its employees and his/her families that the military makes on its service-members and their families. And all those great benefits the CBO considered do not compensate adequately for the stress and duress of military service and military life--at least not as it has been over the past six years.  Ultimately, the pay gap between the civilian world and the military world should only be considered as a FLOOR for military pay, NOT a ceiling.

We also urge you to tell your Congressperson and Senator that under NO circumstances should married and single service-members receive the same housing allowance. In fact, you are opposed to every recommendation that was made by the CBO report on Military Compensation.

The full report can be found at: http://www.federaltimes.com/content/cbo_compensation.pdf

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