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House panel OKs bigger pay hikes to 2013

The House Armed Services Committee moved Wednesday to make the 2009 defense bill even more generous for service members and their families — but also voted for a budgetary gimmick that could, in theory, force a modest one-month cut in military retired pay.

The committee’s version of the annual defense authorization bill already proposed a 3.9 percent military pay raise for Jan. 1, 2009, a half-percentage point more than requested by the Bush administration. That would reduce the purported gap in average military and private-sector wages to 2.9 percent.

In addition, an amendment sponsored by Rep. Thelma Drake, R-Va., approved by voice vote as part of a package of uncontroversial items, would mandate that military pay raises in 2010 through 2013 also be 0.5 percentage points higher than the annual increase in average private-sector wages.

Drake said this would not completely eliminate the pay gap but would leave it at less than 1 percentage point.

Congress already has provided nine consecutive years of pay raises that are greater than the Employment Cost Index, a measurement of private-sector wage growth. In the first five years, the raises were mandated by a formula set in law. Over the last four years, Congress has provided the bigger raises one year at a time.

Drake said she likes the idea of a fixed formula for raises so that service members and their families know what to expect.

The pay gimmick — a 1 percent cut in retired pay slated for September 2013 — was reluctantly approved by the committee to avoid what lawmakers said was an even bigger problem, the possibility that for the first time in history, health care benefits would not have been the same for all retirees.

The one-time pay cut, which would be paid back with a 1 percent increase in October 2013 retirement checks, would raise $40 million in direct spending that was needed to bring Tricare for Life retirees into the same preventive health benefits program being provided to other Tricare users under the committee’s bill.

With the one-month cut in retired pay five years down the road, the bill would immediately create a preventive health program for all Tricare users under which they could receive no-cost treatment for such things as cancer screening, smoking cessation classes and other benefits for which co-payments normally would be charged.

Cutting retired pay, even for one month, was not the preferred way of paying for other benefits, and lawmakers hope they can come up with another way to cover the cost before the bill becomes law.

The committee tried to find offsets for the health care expenses of Medicare-eligible Tricare for Life beneficiaries in other nondefense programs. But aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity said other congressional committees were not helpful.

On another pay issue, Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., was blocked from offering an amendment that would have made retroactive a change enacted earlier this year in reserve retired pay.

Wilson sought to make retroactive new retired pay rules that allow National Guard and reserve members to receive retired pay 90 days earlier than the current age 60 for every 90 consecutive days of mobilization.

The new rules, which took effect with passage of the 2008 Defense Authorization Act on Jan. 28, do not apply to mobilizations that ended before that date. About 600,000 National Guard and reserve members who have been mobilized since the 2001 terrorist attacks would not benefit from the change, including 145,000 who have been called to active duty more than once, Wilson said.

He was not allowed to offer the amendment because he did not propose any way to pay for the retroactive benefits.