Air Force Community - Air Force Times

Military groups most deserving of government ‘bailout’

If the United States can afford to spend almost $1 trillion in bailouts for companies whose financial troubles were caused by their own mismanagement, what about those in the military community who have been forced into grievous sacrifices for the country through no fault of their own?

The Military Officers Association of America doesn’t question the need for urgent and substantive government action to address the very real national economic crisis.

But we do think the nation needs to maintain perspective on the relative degrees of sacrifice for the nation in assessing which groups most deserve substantive federal relief.

Here are MOAA’s top eight nominees who need and deserve government assistance at least as much as business leaders do.

• Currently serving military families, the only large group of U.S. employees denied use of flexible spending accounts to deduct out-of-pocket health and dependent costs from income and payroll taxes. Who needs a child care tax break more than a family with a deployed parent?

• Employers of National Guard and Reserve personnel, who deserve tax breaks to help ease the burden of hiring temporary replacements for ever-more-frequently mobilized staff members. The government, which imposes these requirements on them and expects them to keep hiring Guard and Reserve members, needs to do more to assist them.

• Guard and Reserve members deployed since 9/11, whom the government has acknowledged deserve a reduced retirement-pay age in return for being called up frequently. However, Congress has denied credit for those called up (for multiple combat tours in hundreds of thousands of cases) between 2001 and 2008.

• Military families (again) who have suffered repeated and lengthy family separations because of past government resistance to manpower increases despite predictions of a long war. Some congressional leaders have proposed cutting back on manpower increases when the only possibility for relief is to accelerate them.

• Severely disabled troops forced into early medical retirement who are required to forfeit most or all of their earned military retired pay to fund their own Veterans Affairs disability compensation. Congress passed legislation to assist the combat-disabled, but a glitch in the law stymied relief for many. A 100 percent, non-combat-disabled retiree with less than 20 years of service has no relief.

• Military spouses whose spouses died of service-related causes, thousands of whom receive only $13,000 a year from the government because their VA survivor benefits are deducted from their military Survivor Benefit Plan annuities. Congress has acknowledged the inequity of their situation, but “first-step” relief legislation provided a mere $50 extra per month.

• The thousands of wounded or potential post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury victims who have been separated from service with low-balled disability ratings, “personality disorder” or disciplinary discharges that limited or denied benefits. Programs are changing now, but those already separated since 9/11 deserve reconsideration.

• Family caregivers — mothers, fathers, siblings, spouses and other loved ones — have had to quit their jobs, sell homes, deplete savings and cash in retirement funds to provide full-time care for wounded warriors. The government owes training, respite and compensation to those who never dreamed that a loved one’s wounding would so severely affect their lifestyle and funds.