The Military Coalition, a group of 34 military-related associations , collectively represents over 5 million members. Numbers like that resonate on Capitol Hill.
One of the ways that the Coalition advocates before Congress is through testimony at congressional hearings. This year the Coalition provided detailed information on its positions to both the House and Senate Armed Services Committees’ Personnel Subcommittees.
Here are some of the highlights contained in the Coalition’s testimony:
Military Pay – The Coaltion urges a continuation of fully comparable military pay raises based on the Employment Cost Index annual increases while also urging Congress to ensure that any restructure of the DoD and VA disability and compensation systems does not inadvertently reduce compensation levels for disabled service members.
Military families – The Coalition warns the Congress to resist any initiatives to civilianize or consolidate DoD retail systems in ways that would reduce their value to patrons. It also urges maintenance of Impact Aid funding for schools, funding for Family Readiness Councils, Yellow Ribbon programs, child care programs, spouse education programs as well as the implementation of flexible spending accounts to enable military families to pay health care and child care expenses with pre-tax dollars.
Reserve Component – The Coalition would like to see early retirement credit authorized for all RC members who have served active duty tours of at least 90 days retroactive to Sept 11, 2001 as well as additional improvements to the yellow Ribbon Reintegration Program. The coalition also urges the Congress to enact academic protections for mobilized RC students including refund guarantees and exemption of federal student loan payments during activation and to increase specialized family support and training for programs that help geographically separated RC families.
Concurrent Receipt – A key Coalition goal continues to be to achieve full concurrent receipt for military retirees who have service-caused disability. VA disability compensation should be added not subtracted from service-earned military retired pay.
Survivor Benefit Plan (SBP) – Dependency and Indemnity Compensation (DIC) – Another long time goal for the coalition is the elimination of the SBP–DIC offset as well as authorization by Congress of survivors to retain the final month’s retired pay for the month in which the military retiree dies.
A hearing on healthcare issues will be held later this week. The Coalition will have a representative testifying at that important hearing.
April marks the nation’s “Month of the Military Child,” a time to honor youth impacted by deployment. In celebration, Military Kids (OMK), part of the University of California 4‐H Youth Development program, invites you to join them for the 2nd annual “Purple Up! For Military Kids.” They are encouraging everyone across the nation to wear purple on Friday, 13 April, as a visible way to show support and thank military children for their strength and sacrifices. Purple is the color that symbolizes all branches of the military, as it is the combination of Army green, Coast Guard blue, Air Force blue, Marine red and Navy blue. OMK hopes everyone will take this opportunity to appreciate and celebrate these young heroes. For further information on OMK, please go to: http://www.operationmilitarykids.org
