Congress OKs full pension boost for working-age vets
Congress pulled back Wednesday from its decision two months ago to reduce cost-of-living pension increases for working-age military retirees.
Veterans groups deluged legislators with complaints after Congress voted in December for the change, a tiny part of a large budget deal.
Legislation reinstating the increase easily passed the House 326-90 on Tuesday, and the Senate 95-3 on Wednesday. It now goes to President Barack Obama.
The effort would cost more than $6 billion over 10 years and would be paid for by cuts to Medicare a decade from now. The bill adds another year to the Medicare portion of a decade-long set of automatic cuts, known as sequestration, that began last year.
Legislative leaders pushed aside other options for restoring the pension cuts, including a proposal by Virginia Sens. Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, who wanted to generate the $6 billion by closing a loophole used by some corporations to avoid U.S. taxes on overseas operations.
Kaine said he didn't like shifting the cuts to Medicare, an idea that originated in the House, but felt great urgency to quickly resolve the pension issue.
"We wanted to send a message to the veteran community that we fixed this," Kaine said in a phone interview after the vote.
U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell, R-Virginia Beach, who supported the bill - as did all of Hampton Roads' federal legislators - said he also disliked the Medicare option, but his desire to restore the veteran benefit "trumped that concern I had and still have."
The campaign to restore the cost-of-living adjustment, which would have taken effect in late 2015, illustrates the difficulty Congress will face as it attempts to slim defense spending. Pentagon officials have warned that rising personnel costs are hampering their ability to meet other defense needs.
The benefit change approved in December called for reducing automatic cost-of-living adjustments by one percentage point below the rate of inflation for retirees under age 62. The argument was that those veterans - approximately 800,000 of them - would likely find second careers after retiring from the military.
Once those vets turned 62, the annual increase would have started again after a one-time increase in benefits. The idea was that their payments during retirement would have been the same as if there had been no cuts.
It was unpopular from the start. Veterans and their supporters bombarded lawmakers with emails and phone calls and took to social media urging legislators to undo the reduction. Changing the pension system broke a promise to former military members, they said.
Kaine said Congress will likely debate military pay and benefits next year, after a commission it tasked to study compensation and retirement delivers its recommendations in February 2015.
He acknowledged any proposed changes to military pay and benefits will face considerable resistance. "None of these are easy," he said.
Some changes to military pensions may be inevitable. This week's bill leaves intact the cost-of-living reduction for anyone entering the service as of Jan. 1. In 20 years, when they retire, their cost-of-living adjustments will be trimmed.
At least one veterans group said it will keep fighting to change that.
William Thien, commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S., said in a statement that future retirees deserve the same benefit because they "will be required to serve just as long and perhaps sacrifice even more than their predecessors."
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