MOAA: Now is time to ensure better benefits

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MOAA: Now is time to ensure better benefits
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Jan 23, 2008 13:31:04 EST

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.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/01/military_moaa_paybenefits_080123w/