A Cola Is Finally Coming Fw: The Retired Enlisted Association Washington Update For June 24, 2011

[allan]

: [VeteranIssues] A COLA is Finally Coming FW: The Retired ENLISTED Association Washington Update for June 24, 2011Date: Jun 24, 2011 4:54 PM

A COLA is Finally Coming (We Think)-The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased for the 9th straight month in May. This time it increased by 0.5%. The CPI is the basis for calculating a Cost-of-Living-Adjustment (COLA) for many programs including military retired pay, veterans’ disability pay, SBP, DIC and Social Security. If nothing changes in the next 4 months, there should be a COLA of 3.4%. But it is likely that there will be further inflation so we are expecting a substantial increase. We will continue to follow the monthly findings and pass them on to you.

From: TREA's Washington Office [

Sent: Friday, June 24, 2011 12:26 PM

To: Dan Cedusky

Subject: The Retired ENLISTED Association Washington Update for June 24, 2011

The Retired ENLISTED Association

Washington Update

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FOR JUNE 24, 2011

This has been a very significant time for the U.S Military. President Obama announced his plan for withdrawal from Afghanistan on Wednesday; a new Secretary of Defense was confirmed on Tuesday. On Thursday the President travelled to speak to the troops at Ft. Drum in N.Y. while in DC Congress is debating our role in Libya.

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1) A COLA is Finally Coming (We Think)-The Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased for the 9th straight month in May. This time it increased by 0.5%. The CPI is the basis for calculating a Cost-of-Living-Adjustment (COLA) for many programs including military retired pay, veterans’ disability pay, SBP, DIC and Social Security. If nothing changes in the next 4 months, there should be a COLA of 3.4%. But it is likely that there will be further inflation so we are expecting a substantial increase. We will continue to follow the monthly findings and pass them on to you.

2) Panetta Unanimously Confirmed as Next Secretary Of Defense-On Tuesday the Senate voted 100-0 to confirm Leon Panetta as Secretary of Defense. He will assume the office on June 30 after the retirement of SecDef Robert Gates. Mr. Panetta has been a fixture in Washington and public affairs for almost 40 years. He served for 2 years in the U.S. Army (1964-1966) leaving as a 1st Lieutenant.

After first serving in the Nixon Administration he became a Democrat and was elected for nine terms as a member of the House of Representatives from California. While in the House he served on the Budget Committee and was its Chairman from 1989-1993. In 1993 he left the House to serve first as President Clinton’s head of the Office of Management and Budget and then as his Chief of Staff. He has been President Obama’s head of the Central Intelligence Agency since 2009.

He received praise from both sides of the aisle. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) said: “Just a home-run choice. The president made a very wise decision.” Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand (D-NY) said: “For over four decades, Leon Panetta has been an extraordinary public servant spanning several administrations.” She also noted that he had: “played an instrumental role in the successful mission to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.”

We should realize and be concerned that much of the praise was directed at Mr. Panetta perceived ability to cut the Defense Budget. President Obama has called for $400 billion in DoD cuts in the next 12 years. With his history with the OMB and the Budget Committee many members of Congress think that he will be more likely to cut the Defense budget than Secretary Gates was willing or able to do. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) said: “He is the most qualified individual to tackle the huge budgetary issues.” In a similar vein Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) said: the Secretary of Defense will need to look at every military program and expense and “make the tough choices and trade-offs between our warfighters’ requirements today and preparations for the threats of tomorrow.” And Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said:”In this time of tight budgets, he knows how to do more with less.”

3) SASC’s NDAA Mark Up Includes Changes To TRICARE Benefit-The Senate Armed Services Committee’s (SASC) mark-up of its version of the FY2012 followed the HASC’s lead and included several unfortunate changes in the military health benefits. The Senate bill includes an increase of $60 (for individuals) rising to $260 and an increase of a $120 (for families) rising to $520 enrollment fees for TRICARE Prime in FY2012 for military retirees under the age of 65. Like the House bill it also includes an annual enrollment fee increase from FY2013 onward equal to any yearly federal COLA increase (rather than the medical cost index that DoD was urging). It also included changes in the pharmacy copays for all beneficiaries, and forces newly enrolled members of the Uniformed Services Family Health Plan (USFHP) to age out of the program at age 65 and transfer to TRICARE for Life.

4) Cutting Imminent Danger and Hostile Fire Pay-Looking for ways to lower federal spending the SASC amazingly looked to imminent danger pay. Presently, if a service member spends any time in a war zone/imminent danger area he/she receives a full month imminent danger pay. All $225 of it. In their version of the NDAA the Senate Armed Services Committee requires that the services start to prorate the pay based upon how many days the member is in the designated zone. Stopping what some have called a “combat pay windfall” is projected to save only $30 million a year! The House of Representative’s version of the NDAA has no such provision. TREA strongly urges that this miserably cheap proposal be killed during the Committees’ conference.

5) Exciting Discovery in Military Medical Program-It is said that wars lead to great medical breakthroughs and we may be seeing a new example of that. DoD has invested $70 million in researching “regenerative medicine”. The program is having some stunning successes.

Marine Corporal Isaias Hernandez was just 19 when he lost 70% of his right thigh muscle in Afghanistan when an enemy mortar exploded near him as he was repairing a truck. Normally such a wound would require amputation. However in his case his doctors had Corporal Hernandez strengthen the remaining 30% of muscle. In preparation for the operation, corporal Hernandez was made to build up the remaining 30 per cent of muscle left on the damaged thigh and he was injected with a growth promoting substance extracted from pig bladders. Surgeons then sliced into the thigh, placing a thin slice of a substance called extracellular matrix.

Since the growth hormone treatment the Corporal has regained most of his leg’s strength. This is considered particularly exciting since it regenerated skeletal muscle which does not normally grow back. If future results are consistent with this case it could revolutionize how numerous injuries and wounds are treated.

6) The Outlook for Next week-The Senate may finally start working on its Appropriation bills. Unlike the House of Representatives the Senate has said they are waiting for a deficit reduction agreement before they start working on their 12 Appropriation bills. However with negotiations continuing they have indicated that they will start taking up bills next week. First likely to be taken up is the House passed Military Construction-VA Appropriations Bill (HR2055). This passed the House with bipartisan agreement (411-5) Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), a ranking member of the subcommittee predicted that it would pass easily: “ Members generally support veterans, and Chairman Johnson [D-S.D.] and I agree on just about every provision of the bill…. “I think we’re ready for a rocket sled.” The Senate mark-up is tentatively scheduled for Tuesday, June 28 and we expect it then to go to the Full Committee on Thursday, June 30.

There are not many Congressional hearings scheduled for next week. The Senate Committee of Veterans Affairs will have a hearing on Wednesday June 29 at 3:00 p.m. on “pending legislation and the Senate Armed Services Committee will have a hearing on Tuesday June 28 to consider the nomination of 3 flag officers.

7) Letters to Congress-Frequently in our updates we mention bills under consideration in Congress and we urge you to write to your Senators and Representative to either support or oppose them. We also put letters on Capwiz that you can use to quickly contact your Senators or Congressman in support of, or opposition to, bills or issues. That feature is available at the bottom of each legislative update where it says: Reminder: We have pre-written letters that you can email or send to your Congressional Representatives. Go to: .

However, we don’t always put letters on Capwiz for all of the bills we mention. That’s because TREA operates by resolution and not all bills are covered by our current resolutions. So if we believe our members may be interested in proposed legislation we bring the bills to your attention and urge you to take whatever action you wish to take.

Recently we reported on six bills that are under consideration in the Senate: S423, S491, S696, S698, S815, and S894. We have posted letters for S423, S696, and S894. We will be posting additional letters on Capwiz. Again, please go to http://www.capwiz.com/trea/issues/bills/ to view those letters and decide if you want to send letters to your members of Congress, or you can call them, fax them or mail a traditional letter of your own.

8) Survivor of Bataan Death March Passes Away-James Downey Jr., a survivor of the 1942 Bataan Death March in the Philippines, died Monday in Gloucester, Virginia. He was 96 years old.

Downey served with the Army‘s 26th Cavalry Philippine Scouts, a unit that still rode horses into battle in the early days of World War II. His mother was of Philippine and Spanish heritage and his father was from Augusta County, Georgia, a cavalry officer who fought in the Spanish-American War.

In 1936 Downey had tried out for the U.S. Olympic swim team, when Japanese soldiers captured him on April 9, 1942. He was 27 years old.

He was put in line with thousands of other prisoners and ordered to start walking. The rule was simple, he recalled: “if you stop, you die”.

The forced march to a Japanese POW camp covered 60 miles and lasted five days. Downey’s little brother, Robert, was captured with him and survived the march but eventually died of sickness.

James Downey retired from the Army in 1963 as a master sergeant. He served a stint at Fort Eustis in Newport News, Virginia, where he met his wife, Frances, who passed away in 2006.

For more, see: http://articles.dailypress.com/2011-06-20/news/dp-nws-bataan-death-march-obit-20110620_1_bataan-death-march-japanese-soldiers-japanese-tank

9) U.S. Army Announces Site For Its Planned National Museum.-The open secret of the site of the long planned U.S. Army was made official this week. It will be at the North Post of Ft. Belvoir. The museum is being privately funded by the Army Historical Society. The plan is for the museum to open in June 2013.

When making the announcement Secretary of the Army John M. McHugh said: “In presenting the Army’s storied 236-year history, this long-overdue facility will offer the American people a unique opportunity to connect with our soldiers and better understand and appreciate their many and glorious stories.”

Presently the Army is the only service without a service-wide museum. The Navy Museum is located at the Navy Yard in Washington D.C.; the Marine Corps Museum is located at the Marine Base Quantico in Prince William County, Va.; and the Air Force Museum is located at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio and the Coast Guard Museum is at the Coast Guard Academy in New London Connecticut.

10) Contract Fight Between Walgreens And Express Scripts Reaches Impasse-Express Scripts, which is the contractor for both the TRICARE Retail Pharmacy and TRICARE Pharmacy Home Delivery, and Walgreens, the largest drug store chain in the country is having a knocked down drag out contract fight. This week Walgreen publically announced that they will stop filling Express Scripts prescription benefits on January 1. Of course there are still many months to go. Walgreens receives over $5.5 billion in annual revenue from Express Scripts plans. It makes a full 7% of their revenue. (Express Scripts is the second-largest pharmacy benefits manager in the United States and expects to handle at least 750 million prescription claims this year.)

Surely we will hear more about this in the weeks ahead, TREA will watch to see if this fight may harm TRICARE Pharmacy beneficiaries and keep you informed.

11) Parris Island Gets Woman General-Last Friday Brig. Gen. Loretta Reynolds took command of the Marine’s Training Depot, Parris Island. Reynolds is the first woman to take command of the base in its 96 year history. She will also be in charge of the Marines’ Eastern Recruiting Region, which covers the 23 states east of the Mississippi River.

Serving a year in Afghanistan she became the first woman Marine to hold a command position in a battle zone.

She is 1 of 3 women generals in the 200,000 member Marine Corps. She graduated from the Naval Academy in 1986. In total there are 12,339 enlisted women, 108 women warrant officers and 1,224 women officers in the Marine Corps.

On the Parris Island website, the service said training for men and women is identical, and that roughly 2,400 female recruits go through it every year.

Parris Island graduates 20,000 Marines a year and is the only site where female enlisted Marines are trained to enter the service.

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"Keep on, Keepin' on"

Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL "Colonel Dan"

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[jbasser]

Broncovet, Government employees pay scale doesnt have a damn thing to do with what Vets earn in comp.

The truth is this. A 100 pecent disabled vet makes around 36000 per year. That is freaking net take home monies.

That would equal to around 50000 to 53000 straight salary. You add your SSDI and you are bringing home 50 K and that is equal to 70K salary.

Basser

[justrluk]

@ vync - the step increases stretch out the longer you're in a given grade. Since I've been at my grade for a while, no raise in sight for 3 years, yet my health insurance goes up taking more out of my check thus I make less three years from now than I am today in real dollars.

@ John - yes, our system is no gold mine. I see it as a small income stream in combination with VA disability, but that's all. Without the VA, we'd have lost our home.

@ bronc - I agree, those making the decisions that impact our very ability to live at best a modest life should have some skin in the game. I believe they do, but I don't know if I want (forgive me, but I must) a minimum-wage, part-time or contract person (doing the best they can, of course) making those decisions. I don't mind the VA employees being paid well for producing a quality product, just as I wouldn't mind any line-worker building my car, if that salary commands experience, judgement and has a positive impact on those being served. Speaking of serving, I too have a problem even watching people walking around in BDUs for whatever reason when I know they never served to earn the right to wear them. Petty, I know, but just saying.... And yes, most of those in elected positions have never served, and at the rate of suicide and unemployment of those returning, I don't see that trend moving at all. It's a tragedy: with all those in combat, returning and wanting to do more only a few may be elected into positions that can truly benefit the Vets.

@ Phil - No problem. Even our emails have to be 10 lines or less, or no one reads them.

@ Mama Bear - not ignoring you; love your post!

[JR Reihs]

I understand all points , JBasser said it best......this is about COLAS, nothing else. LOOK at the CPI charts over the years and see how those calculations have been manipulated......I understand part of the reasoning behind it, though after a while it starts hurting.

The people who are really hurting are those that try to survive on SS or a simple pension alone. Back when we got the 5%+ COLA, I said we got real lucky cuz it wasn't soon to happen again.

When a Country is so poor it has to revert to printing its own money to pay its bills, the jig is up and the outcome is not going to be good for us in the end. We may have mid to late 2012 until the dollar breaks down completely. The best thing you can do for yourselves now is to buy some metals while they are down,it will be the best COLA you will have in the coming months.

[carlie]

Thread is closed.