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MOAA: Now is time to ensure better benefits

The head of the 370,000-member Military Officers Association of America said Wednesday that he feels a “sense of urgency” in guarding against the erosion of career pay and benefits for active, reserve and retired members and their families.

“Retention of the current all-volunteer force is an issue that keeps me up at night,” said retired Vice Adm. Norbert Ryan Jr., who worries that personnel-related programs, especially core retirement benefits such as health care, are taking a back seat to war-related budgetary needs, with a potential to cause serious harm.

Ryan said MOAA will press Congress and the Pentagon to continue expanding the active Army and Marine Corps as quickly as possible, provide military pay raises that are comparable with private-sector wages, and hold down any increases in health care costs for retirees and their families.

A good pay raise for 2009 would be 3.9 percent, Ryan said, which would be 0.5 percentage point higher than the average increase in last year in private-sector wages.

Ryan and MOAA’s government relations director, retired Air Force Col. Steve Strobridge, said Congress has stood up to administration-proposed budget cuts — such as smaller pay raises and higher fees for the Tricare health plan — and also has helped to fix longstanding flaws in the military pay and benefits system, such as a prohibition on simultaneously receiving full military retired pay and veterans’ disability compensation.

They do not want Congress to let up, however, because they are worried about how the Pentagon will try to cope in the future with tighter budgets. While bonuses and incentive pays are successful today getting many people to re-enlist, Ryan said critical shortages exist in some skills — and the potential is there for more widespread shortages as troops and their families decide they have sacrificed enough.

Keeping career enlisted members and officers is “the No. 1 challenge” facing the military, Ryan said.

Strobridge said he hopes Congress and the Pentagon can set basic principles for benefits now, at a time when attention is on the stress posed by military life, to protect against future cuts when money becomes tighter.

Those core principles include competitive pay and retirement and health plans that are slightly more generous than in the private sector to make up for the many sacrifices of military life, he said.

A strong statement of principle today, Strobridge said, would show troops and their families that “we are not going to nickel and dime you when the budget gets short.”

Discuss: Just political maneuverings or discussions of substance?