Senate Passes Defense Authorization Bill, S. 1390

September 2009 Navy

by CAPT Ike Puzon, USN (Ret)

The Senate surprisingly passed the Senate version of the FY 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on 24 July 2009. The measure now goes to the House and the House and Senate will appoint conferees to work out the thousands of differences. The conference will most likely begin in September, but could last a long time due to contentious differences.

Some of the Senate amendment provisions actively supported by AUSN are listed below. We ask you to watch for our legislative alerts and take action to get these provisions, our legislative goals, passed. Along with our coalition partners, we are pushing the passage of several key legislative issues in the FY 2010 NDAA.

Key Senate NDAA (S. 1390) Amendments supported:

• Sen. Charles Schumer’s (D-NY) amendment (with inputs by Sen. John Cornyn, R-TX) to protect military absentee voting rights by authorizing electronic communications and limiting the counting of absentee ballots based on technicalities.
• Sen. John F. Kerry (D-MA) and Saxby Chambliss’ (R-GA) were successful in including an amendment on early retirement. It would allow for service back to 11 September 2001 for the determination of a reduced eligibility age for receipt of pay National Guard and Reserve retired pay.
• Sen. James Risch (R-ID) got Senate agreement to authorize the service secretaries to increase the end-strength of the Selected Reserve by two percent.
• Improving active dwell time, this should also reduce pressure to deploy the Army National Guard and Reserve.
• An amendment by Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-CT) would extend monthly special pay benefits for members of the Reserve Components of the Armed Forces to include time spent performing predeployment and reintegration duty.
• Two accepted amendments from Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) would improve and expand suicide prevention and community healing and response training under the Yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program; and require a report on plans for further implementation of the program as a whole.
• An amendment by Sen. Robert Casey (D-PA) would require a report on the feasibility of requiring postdeployment health assessments of Guard and Reserve members deployed in connection with contingency operations at their home stations or counties of residence.
• Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-MN) amendment would require DoD to improve access to mental health care for family of National Guard and Reserve members who were deployed overseas.
• Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) seeks to permit Guard and Reserve members to continue in an active duty status during the physical disability evaluation process resulting from disabilities incurred during deployment in an area of imminent danger.
• Sen. Bernard Sanders’ (I-VT) amendment requests a report to Congress on financial assistance for child care available to deployed members of the Reserve Components of the Armed Forces.
• Another key amendment was Sen. Bill Nelson’s initiative to end the deduction of VA Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) from military Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) annuities.
• Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D-NJ) amendment emphasizing the need to sustain a military health benefit consistent with the unique demands and sacrifices inherent in a military career, and the need to find other ways of cutting DoD health costs besides shifting costs to retirees.
• Sen. Barbara Boxer’s (D-CA) amendment expressing Congress’s view that the Secretary of Defense should use existing authority to implement Flexible Spending Accounts for currently serving members so they can set aside pretax money to pay out-of-pocket health and dependent care expenses, just as all other federal and major corporate employees can.
• Sen. Richard Burr’s (R-NC) amendment to give military spouses the option to elect the same state of domicile as their servicemember spouse.

The above amendments to S. 1390 – were strongly supported by AUSN.

One provision we lobbied heavily was the TRICARE Standard Coverage for Reservists (gray area) who are qualified for a non-regular retirement but are not yet age 60. Reservists that qualify can purchase the TRICARE standard health care plan by paying full cost.

There are several provisions within the House bill, H.R. 2647, that AUSN actively and aggressively supported. A few of the provisions passed in the House version of the FY 2010 NDAA (H.R. 2647):

• Authorizes a pay raise of 3.4% (also in the Senate version).
• Medical Examination before Separation of Service Members with PTSD or TBI.
• Travel Benefits for Wounded Service Members.
• Extended TRICARE Eligibility for Reserve Members; Extended TRICARE eligibility to reserve members so they can now receive full TRICARE coverage 180 days before they go on active duty. Previously, reserve members were only eligible 90 days before they went on active duty.
• Extended special pays and bonuses for a wide variety of groups and services, including reenlistment, referrals and critical wartime specialties such as mental health professionals and nurses. (Also addressed in the Senate version.)
• Access to TRICARE Standard health care for retired National Guard and Reserve Members, gray area retirees.
• Get the full version of the House NDAA (H.R. 2647).

We will have details of the Senate and House versions available on-line shortly. The House and Senate leaders will be appointed to a conference committee to resolve more than a thousand differences between the House- and Senate-passed versions of the defense bill, including many difficult issues.We are asking all to send e-mails, letters, faxes to your representatives in Congress in support of our key legislative agenda and goals, as well as those issues above. Your active support is critical to having these included in the final version of the FY 2010 – National Defense Authorization Act.