Here is a
Patriot.
Here is a
Patriot getting shortchanged.
Give him your
feedback and encouragement – that is the very least he deserves!
Deb V
Dear Friends,
When a Retired
Military Woman or Man becomes disabled due to service in the Armed Forces, any
compensation received is taken from their Earned Retirement Pay. This
means that they are funding their own disability compensation. The
Congress, both Houses have past Bills to return the Earned Retirement that the
service person fulfilled by staying over 20 years in the service. The
President has plans for cutting that out of the military funding or Vetoing the
Whole Bill. Should this happen, I ask you to think of it when you next go
to the polls to Vote.
Also I ask you
to, after reading the attached letter to pass it on to all on your mailing
list.
I have already
sent the letter to the President, my Commander in Chief. Both Senators
and House members of Massachusetts have signed on to have this bill Passed.
Thanks for your consideration, and hope you also will write to the President.
Joshua M. Duncan
Military Retired with NO Retirement Pay
It's about keeping promises -
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- It's been a lousy summer for
President George W. Bush. Republican leaders are grousing that he isn't doing
enough to keep GOP control of the House. Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld has his
arm in a cast, and the Pentagon press corps is beating him up because we can't
find Osama's body. Diplomatic correspondents are howling that the president
isn't tough enough on Israel. The business press blames him for the stock
market collapse and for being soft on corporate crooks. And now the gossip
columnists are piling on over the length of his vacation. No wonder the man
wants to spend a month in Crawford. But while he's at the ranch, he had better
phone Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Mitch Daniels or it could
get even worse. If he doesn't, some of his most fervent supporters will start
re-thinking their loyalty. Who are they? America's soldiers, sailors, airmen,
Marines, veterans and military retirees. The troops' lament: broken promises.
Here's the problem. When he was campaigning for
commander in chief, Bush habitually said things like:
"To the veteran, we owe gratitude -- shown not just in words of tribute,
but in acts of care and attention. ... As president, I will work with Congress
to raise the standard of service -- not just for veterans, but for our military
retirees. All of them must be treated with the care they have been promised and
the dignity they have earned."
Gov. Bush spoke those words to the American
Legion in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Sept. 6, 2000, and replicated them throughout
his campaign. America's military and veteran families -- more than 26 million
of them – heard and believed. And overwhelmingly, they voted for him -- as was
evident after dimpled chads and absentee ballots became big issues in Florida.
Many military and veteran families believe that if it weren't for them, George
W. Bush wouldn't be president. And they may be right. To his credit, Bush
continued his courtship of veterans after his inaugural. At a Memorial Day
breakfast in the East Room on May 28, 2001, he said:
"America's veterans ask only that government honor its commitments as they
honored theirs. They ask that their interests be protected, as they protected
their country's interest in foreign lands. In all matters of concern to
veterans -- from health care to program funding -- you have my pledge that
those commitments will be kept. My administration will do all it can to assist
our veterans and to correct oversights of the past."
Great stuff. Too bad that this week the Bush
administration's budget boss, OMB Director Mitch Daniels, made all those
promises appear hollow. The issue, like so much else in the federal government,
is a little-known inequity with an arcane moniker: "concurrent
receipt," a provision of law that prohibits retired military veterans from
drawing full retirement checks if they also receive a disability payment. What
it means is that those who suffer a disabling wound defending our country
will be financially
punished if they somehow manage to stay in the armed forces long enough to retire. Sound nuts? It is.
In the interest of full disclosure, let me make
this personal. During my 22 years in the Marines, I wasn't always quick or
agile enough to get out of the way when our nation's enemies were doing bad
things. My fellow Marines pinned a couple of purple hearts on my uniform to
remind others of my clumsiness. When I got around to retiring in 1988, a Navy
doctor wrote up a long report describing various wounds and injuries. The
Department of Veteran's Affairs took the doctor's evaluation and decided that
the damage was worth about $450 per month. What I didn't understand at the time
was the ingenious way our government had of paying me roughly $5,400 per year.
It comes out of my own pocket. Every month, my retirement check is reduced by
precisely the amount of my disability payment.
And that's exactly how it's done for roughly
550,000 other disabled, retired veterans. No one would dare to reduce
retirement benefits for postal workers with hernias from hoisting mailbags. Nor
would anyone in Congress have the temerity to suggest that Civil Service
employees forfeit a portion of their retirement checks to pay for on-the-job
injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome. Only those who do the dirty and dangerous
work of defending this nation suffer this indignity -- the very ones who
believed the president's promise that, "My administration understands
America's obligations not only to those who wear the uniform today, but to
those who wore the uniform in the past -- our veterans."
Unfortunately, the deficit hawks in Bush's Office
of Management and Budget are now ignoring this "obligation" (his
word, not mine) because fixing the problem is too expensive. The Congressional
Budget Office estimates it would cost approximately $2 billion in fiscal year 2003.
Of course, bloated deficits haven't stopped Congress from padding its own
payrolls or stuffing 8,341 pork-barrel projects, estimated by Citizens Against
Government Waste at $20 billion, in this year's 13 appropriations bills. What's
worse, the Rumsfeld Pentagon doesn't seem to grasp that this punitive policy
has an unquantifiable adverse effect on retention and combat effectiveness. Do
we really want a military force led by risk-averse, desk-bound officers and
NCOs who avoid the possibility of getting wounded because they don't want to
financially punish their families?
Bush has said, "Veterans are a priority for
this administration."
He had better make those in his administration
believe it because veterans also believe that old axiom, "You can't just
talk the talk -- you have to walk the walk.
Josh