CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Sept. 26, 2011 – 10:56 p.m.
By John M. Donnelly, CQ Staff
The nation’s defense establishment has mobilized to fight the possibility of deep defense reductions, but few areas of the budget will get more resistance to cuts than pay and benefits for men and women in uniform.
Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta has said repeatedly that “everything is on the table” when it comes to trimming the U.S. military’s budget amid the push to slim down the nation’s budget deficit, and many lawmakers have said the same.
Spending on military personnel — in the form of pay, pensions and health care benefits — is consuming an ever-larger share of the Pentagon budget, making it an obvious target. But, as numerous lawmakers have made clear, that will not happen without significant political bloodletting.
The most recent declaration came on Sept. 23, when 15 senators wrote Panetta to urge him not to touch the pensions of currently serving military personnel when offering potential budget cuts.
“While deficit reduction is essential, balancing the budget and curbing costs in the U.S. Department of Defense by cutting retirement benefits to those now serving is patently unfair to our military members and their families and puts in jeopardy the recruitment and retention of our nation’s future all-volunteer force,” the senators wrote.
The letter was signed by Republican James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma and 14 Democrats: Jim Webb of Virginia, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Dianne Feinstein of California, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Mark Begich of Alaska, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Tom Udall of New Mexico, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Daniel K. Akaka of Hawaii.
The letter was prompted in part by a Pentagon advisory panel’s July recommendation that the military’s pensions, which come to those who serve for 20 years, should be transformed into 401(k)-style retirement accounts. One of the options was to have currently serving personnel switch to the new system going forward.
But Panetta quickly ruled that option out, and the White House Office of Management and Budget, in a Sept. 19 deficit reduction plan, followed suit.
Health Care Commission
The White House, fully aware of how touchy the subject of military pensions can be, stated in its plan that a special commission should be created to make recommendations on the subject. It would be modeled on the base closure panels, whose proposals cannot be altered by Congress. The White House did recommend changes to another hot-button area of military personnel benefits by proposing new fees for some of those who participate in the military’s Tricare health care network, as well as higher co-payments for certain prescriptions.
Troops and their families are worried about these developments, and groups representing them have conveyed those concerns.
In a statement pertaining to the White House’s proposal for new Tricare fees, the Air Force Association said, “The administration is trying to balance the budget on the backs of those veterans and their families who have served this country in times of war and peace.”
Similarly, the Military Officers Association of America accused the administration of misunderstanding the commitments made by military personnel and their families.
“The whole purpose of the unique military retirement and health care package is to offset the extraordinary demands and sacrifices inherent in a service career,” the group said in a statement. “They were built to provide a powerful incentive for top-quality people to serve 20 to 30 years in uniform, despite the kind of hardships imposed on troops and families over the last 10 years of war.”
Some in Congress, such as Webb, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, have struck that same theme.
“Our career military professionals’ conditions of service are not comparable to working in corporate America,” Webb said in a written statement. “While there may be some areas where the present system could be improved, any proposals to do so must be very carefully considered in terms of their possible unintended consequences on today’s military, including recruiting and retention.”
Similar voices are being heard on the other side of Capitol Hill. Rep. Joe Heck, a freshman Republican from Nevada who serves on the comparable personnel subcommittee in the House, said in a statement on his website that he does not support any cuts to military pay and benefits because “we should not ask our service members to take a pay cut when we are engaged in three wars and they are serving multiple deployments.”
Air Force Secretary Michael B. Donley tiptoed around the issue when he appeared at a Sept. 19 Air Force conference.
“Our obligation to those who serve is to ensure that the compensation and benefits they earn are sustainable over the long haul,” Donley said. “Any potential changes to our military retirement system must be carefully considered to make sure we retain the highly motivated and experienced workforce necessary to execute the Air Force mission.”
Other Potential Cuts
Of course, personnel programs aren’t the only parts of the defense budget with influential and well-funded constituents.
The list of potential areas for downsizing includes scaling back or killing new weapons programs and retiring older ones in the inventory, reducing the ranks of active-duty troops, and shutting down or shrinking military installations worldwide.
The Aerospace Industries Association has launched an advocacy campaign dubbed “Second to None,” in order to tout the benefits of defense spending in general, while employees of defense contractors are making their companies’ cases locally. Communities around the country also are hiring lobbyists to make the case for their military installations that could face funding cuts or even elimination.
And in the House, Armed Services Committee Republicans are unlikely to suggest to the joint deficit reduction committee any cutbacks to defense spending beyond the $454 billion already likely to be reduced from the Pentagon’s planned budgets over the next decade under the August debt ceiling law (PL 112-25).