MILITARY UPDATE
House votes for 3.1% pay raise

By Tom Philpott

The House passed a $441.6 billion defense authorization bill for fiscal 2006 that includes a 3.1 percent military pay raise for next January and higher ceilings on bonuses and special pays.

Before Wednesday's vote, Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the armed services committee, pulled a provision that would have opened the new Tricare Reserve Select (TRS) to any drilling Reserve or Guard member. And Hunter retreated on a controversial initiative that would have tightened congressional oversight of women's assignments to combat.

The 2006 military pay raise, which the Senate is expected to match in passing its own defense bill, would be the seventh annual military raise to exceed private-sector wage growth, further narrowing a perceived gap.

But attracting far more attention before a final vote was Hunter's decision, two days after the bill cleared committee, to discard a provision to open TRS to any drilling Reserve or Guard member willing to pay $75 a month for coverage (or $233 for family coverage).

Citing analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, Hunter said expanding TRS, which overall would cost more than $1 billion a year, also would hike mandatory spending, by $5 million in 2006, and therefore was in technical violation of the Congressional Budget Act. Hunter used his prerogative as chairman to remove the provision from the bill.

The problem with expanding TRS to any drilling reservist, Hunter said, is that civilian employers will "game the system" and stick the government with providing for all reservists' healthcare, arguing they earn it anyway.

Other highlights of the House-passed bill include:

• Hardship duty pay: The monthly $300 ceiling would rise to $750.

• Bonuses: Maximum enlistment bonuses would climb from $20,000 to $30,000 for active duty and from $10,000 to $15,000 for reserve. The ceiling on active re-enlistment bonuses would jump from $60,000 to $90,000

• Death benefits: Gains enacted as part of the Emergency Supplemental Wartime Appropriations Act would be made permanent. They include the lump-sum death gratuity of $100,000, versus $12,400, if a member dies in combat, in a combat zone or during combat-related training. This and a $150,000 gratuity tied to Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance would be paid retroactively for combat-related deaths back to Oct. 7, 2001.

Also made permanent would be a maximum SGLI of $400,000 for active-duty deaths, up from $250,000.

• Concurrent receipt: It would accelerate by four years and three months restoration of full retirement pay for 28,000 disabled retirees rated unemployable. These so-called IU retirees, with others having a VA disability rating or 50 percent or higher, are on a 10-year schedule to phase out an offset in retiree pay by the amount received in disability compensation. On an amendment from Rep. G. K. Butterfield, D-N.C., the offset would end in 2009 instead of 2014. The $164 million cost would be covered by selling surplus chromium alloy from Cold-War-era stocks. Congress last year voted to restore retiree pay immediately to 22,000 retirees with 100 percent disability ratings. IU retirees have injuries or ailments rated 60 percent to 90 percent disabling, but receive VA compensation at the 100 percent level because they can't work.