A battle the troops can’t win alone

More than a year ago the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States along with other veteran and military service organizations pounded Congress into eliminating legislation that penalized military retirees with a one-percent reduction to annual cost-of-living adjustments (COLA). In a compromise, Congress grandfathered all military retirees and those currently serving in uniform, but Congress still imposed the one-percent penalty on all new enlistees, should they reach retirement eligibility.

Then, as now, the COLA penalty is bad for the future All-Volunteer Force. The penalty negates all the upfront service and sacrifice that’s required before someone can earn the title of “military retiree,” like first volunteering decades of one’s youth to the nation. The penalty discounts the dozen or more moves that consistently uproot children from schools and spouses from any semblance of a career, or the dangerous deployments and hazardous duty assignments. And the penalty ignores the potential age discrimination many military retirees encounter when entering the civilian workforce in their 40s and 50s.

{mosads}What Congress did when they passed the COLA penalty was to confirm to the troops that the nation loves you while you’re in uniform, but once retired, you cost too much.

Congress needs to be continually educated that military retirees are already financially singled out with a dollar-for-dollar offset if they have service-connected disabilities below 50 percent, whereas other federal retirees receive both payments regardless of disability ratings. That surviving military spouses are hit with a “widow’s tax” that reduces Defense Department Survivor Benefits Program payments by the amount received from the Department of Veterans Affairs-administered Dependency and Indemnity Compensation Plan, whereas surviving spouses of other federal retirees have no such penalties. And that the COLA penalty now dooms to failure the new military retirement system proposals made by the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, both the U.S. House and Senate, and now by the Department of Defense.

The world will remain a very dangerous and unpredictable place even after America ends its current involvements, and future military retirees may be required to serve just as long and perhaps sacrifice even more than their predecessors. It is in that regard that the VFW will continue to fight for a full repeal of the COLA penalty by asking our members and veterans’ advocates everywhere to urge their elected members to Congress to make the right decision.

Stroud, of Hawthorne, Nev., is an Air Force retiree and the national commander of the 1.9 million-member VFW and its auxiliaries.