Military Officer -February 2009

February 2009 The Honorable John McCain Ranking Minority Member Committee on Armed Services United States Senate Washington, DC 20510 Dear Senator McCain: 2009 is a crucial year for national defense and our currently serving and retired military families. In this new legislative year, I write to urge your support on two particularly important priorities. First, it is essential to sustain the Defense budget at levels required to meet pressing requirements for both personnel and weapons/equipment programs. With the nation in serious economic straits, some in Congress already are calling for cutbacks in programmed growth in Army and Marine Corps manpower to fund weapons programs and free more budget headroom for non-defense issues. That would be a tragic mistake. Today’s force levels clearly are inadequate to meet deployment requirements — forcing unacceptable burdens of sacrifice on active duty, Guard, and Reserve families. Because any drawdown of forces in Iraq will be offset by increased deployments to Afghanistan, any cutbacks in planned force growth would only worsen the expected pace of deployments. Also, there is no avoiding the reality that years of war have worn out weapons and equipment that now must be replaced and modernized. These and other military requirements will take a great deal of money, but there can be no higher priority than ensuring readiness for any potential future contingencies. Pretending the nation can cut one essential readiness component (personnel) to fund another — especially in wartime — would consciously increase the already intolerable burdens imposed on military families. Such gross insensitivity to their sacrifices would only further undermine retention and readiness that already have been placed at such grave risk. Second, I urge you to continue resisting pressures to impose disproportional TRICARE fee increases for military retirees. I hope the new administration will choose a different path and recognize that focusing only on cash fees ignores that career servicemembers already paid huge up-front, in-kind premiums for their health care — through decades of family sacrifices and hardships. Military health care cost growth hardly has been unexpected or out of line with national trends (8 percent of the DoD budget versus 16 percent of the national economy). It reflects Congress’ decisions to sustain large standing forces over the past 60 years and correct decades of wrongs imposed on older retirees, who paid almost all costs from their own pockets before enactment of TRICARE For Life. It also reflects inadequate DoD efforts to eliminate program waste, promote preventive medicine, and aggressively promote use of the lower-cost mail-order pharmacy. Simply put, military beneficiaries should not be forced to foot the bill for Pentagon inefficiencies. Sincerely,

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Military Officer -February 2009 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Legislative Action Letters Chapters in Action Financial Form Annual Message Ask the Doctor Cover Story: Legacy Lives On They Love a Man in Uniform What Would You Do? 80 Years Strong Pages of History Faces of MOAA Information Exchange MOAA Scholarship Donors Advertising Index Member Books Sounding Taps MOAA Calendar Encore

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