MILITARY UPDATE
Concurrent receipt push loses steam
Military Update focuses on issues affecting pay, benefits and lifestyle of active and retired servicepeople. Its author, Tom Philpott, is a Virginia-based syndicated columnist and freelance writer. He has covered military issues for almost 25 years, including six years as editor of Navy Times. For 17 years he worked as a writer and senior editor for Army Times Publishing Co. Philpott, 50, enlisted in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1973 and served as an information officer from 1974-77.
By Tom Philpott
More than 670,000 military retirees with VA-rated disabilities are ineligible for the new Combat-Related Special Compensation. Many wonder whether CRSC truly is a beachhead in the battle for concurrent receipt of full retired and VA disability compensation or the end of the line on this issue.
Few members of Congress oppose legislation that would end an offset of retired pay for retirees with service-connected disabilities that occurs when they draw VA compensation. Rep. Michael Bilirakis, R-Fla., and Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., have championed the cause.
Bilirakis again this year introduced the Retired Pay Restoration Act (HR 303), which would end the ban on concurrent receipt for all retirees with VA disabilities. So far it has 341 co-sponsors. Last year a similar bill had more than 400.
Reid again got Senate colleagues to insert a similar language in the defense authorization bill. Like last year, however, it is not financed.
Rep. Jim Marshall, D-Ga., a House freshman and disabled Vietnam veteran, is trying a new approach: a discharge petition to force HR 303 out of the armed services committee for a floor vote. He needs 218 signatures. As of Wednesday, he had 193, but only one Republican, Tom Tancredo of Colorado.
Even Bilirakis has not signed it. An aide said he would prefer to try to work with House leaders, to press them to support the Senate position during negotiations over the defense bill.
Republicans see Marshall's petition as an attempt to embarrass them. The Bush administration strongly opposes concurrent receipt.
Passage of CRSC clearly drained energy from the issue. Roughly 35,000 retirees with combat and combat-training disabilities will receive from $104 to $2,193 more a month. Gone will be examples of persons scarred by war and, in effect, paying for their disabilities through reduced retired pay.
The Congressional Research Service in a June 4 report on military retirement issues, said action on concurrent receipt in the 108th Congress, which runs through next year, "now seems unlikely."
The big obstacles are the cost and a softening of certainty that the remaining 670,000 retirees have been wronged.
On cost, estimates on CRSC run from $270 million to $600 million a year. Full concurrent receipt would cost roughly 10 times as much, perhaps $5 billion a year, according to congressional analysts.
Marshall made familiar arguments for concurrent receipt including that retired pay and disability compensation are earned in their own right. One shouldn't reduce the other.
"The deal understood by the average troop is, 'If I stay in and I get hurt, I will get my retirement and I will get compensated for my disability,' " Marshall said.
Marshall dismissed the argument that many retirees receive VA disability for ailments caused by aging, lifestyle choices or family medical histories rather than service life.
"That's a separate question altogether from what I'm raising," Marshall said. "If we need to go back and rethink how we classify folks, disability-wise, fine. Let's got back and rethink what we're doing. But the deal that was struck is the deal we ought to be living up to."
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