Military Officer - May 2007 - (Page 31)

washingtonscene Budget Brightens House and Senate versions of the FY 2008 budget resolution reject TRICARE fee increases, upgrade VA funding, and offer hope for concurrent receipt and SBP ﬁxes. L E G I S L AT I V E N E W S T H AT A F F E C T S Y O U T he news was mostly good in late March as the House and Senate began working on their respective versions of the FY 2008 budget resolution, which establishes budget caps that Congress will have to live by in the next ﬁscal year. The best news was that both the House and Senate resolutions rejected the administration’s budget proposal to impose large fee increases on retired military beneﬁciaries under age 65. Both resolutions restored the $1.86 billion the administration had proposed cutting from the defense health program. Only a small portion of the proposed budget cut was attributable to increased revenues from higher fees. Most of the proposed reduction was attributable to an assumption that the fee increases would drive hundreds of thousands of military beneﬁciaries away from using their earned TRICARE beneﬁts. Both chambers saw that as inappropriate and restored the full funding amount — which means the Armed Services committees will again have the latitude to reject the proposed increases, just as they did last year. That doesn’t mean we’re out of the woods, as the committees may still consider any fee increase proposals recommended by the DoD-appointed Task Force on the Future of Military Health Care, which owes the committees an interim re- port this month. But now at least the committees won’t be under budget pressure to adopt any such recommendations. There was good news on other fronts as well. Both the House and Senate resolutions beefed up the VA budget by several billion dollars to fully fund VA health care needs. In addition, the resolution produced by the House Budget Committee would allow “providing funds to increase military pay and improve military beneﬁts.” MOAA previously had briefed the House committee staff on the need to enhance the military pay raise and provide at least some additional relief on concurrent receipt and the Survivor Beneﬁt Plan (SBP). Our sources say House leaders would like to make additional progress on those and other compensation issues, and the ﬂexible budget resolution language was adopted to retain some latitude for action, pending development of funding sources. As this article went to press, the resolution was scheduled to come up for action before the entire House during the week of March 26. The process was further along in the Senate, which completed work on its version of the resolution, including provisions to allow increases in beneﬁts and assistance for wounded servicemembers, unspeciﬁed increases in VA beneﬁts, and latitude to increase Medicare and TRICARE payments to doctors, all of which are on MOAA’s legislative agenda. M AY 2 0 0 7 Timetable for Defense Bill Action ■ The House and Senate Armed Services committees plan to draft their respective versions of the FY ‘08 Defense Authorization Bill in late April and late May, respectively. The full House and Senate hope to pass the bills by the July 4 recess. Subsequent negotiations to resolve House and Senate differences usually carry into the fall. MILITARY OFFICER 31

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - May 2007

Military Officer - May 2007 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Cover Story: Back Home Capt. David Porter, Pirate Hunter Where Valor Rests Emblems of Courage MOAA Member Services Pages of History Information Exchange Advertising Index Member Books MOAA Calendar MOAA Scholarship Donors Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - May 2007

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.