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September: Hot Time On The Hill. FY2008 starts in 24 days, and Congress still has 13 appropriations bills to pass - to say nothing of humongous Medicaid and Medicare fixes and the FY2008 Defense Authorization Bill. That legislative plate is full - and hot.
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Pentagon Plans to Drop ID Card SSAN. It will take a few years, but the Pentagon has told Congress it plans to remove Social Security numbers from military ID cards.
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Disability Commission Offers 100+ Recommendations. In its last few weeks before its report is due (Oct. 1), the Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission is putting the final tweaks on more than a hundred recommendations for Congress.
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September: Hot Time On The Hill
If you thought there were a lot of fireworks in DC on July 4th, wait until you see the last two weeks of September.
With only three weeks until the Oct. 1 start of FY2008, Congress hasn't finished any of the 13 appropriations bills that are supposedly due by then. That's hardly news - Congress rarely finishes the appropriations process on time. But with a Democratic Congress for the first time in his tenure, the President this year is threatening to veto any appropriations bills (other than for Veterans Affairs and Defense) that significantly exceed his proposed budget.
Since congressional leaders have some substantially different priorities, that threat sets the stage for some fiscal brinksmanship that could extend into the next couple of months or more. Congressional leaders of both parties aren't interested in forcing the kinds of government shutdowns seen in previous decades, but neither side is interested in caving to the other's demands. So it's a distinct possibility that the Defense Appropriations Bill (a must-pass item in wartime that no one is anxious to see vetoed) could end up having several other appropriations bills attached to it if legislators see that as a route to win one big, compromise, veto-proof appropriation.
On the more immediate front of defense issues, the Senate has been holding off further action on the FY2008 Defense Authorization bill until after Gen Petraeus delivers his report on the effectiveness of the surge in Iraq and his outlook for the future. Senate leaders expect to resume action on that bill on September 18.
We can certainly expect a new round of debate on Iraq timelines, most likely focusing on beginning a withdrawal of some modest level of troops from Iraq. If the Senate can come to an agreement on whether to add or drop that issue, there are still more than 200 other amendments to the bill that remain to be addressed, including many MOAA-supported initiatives concerning health care, military pay raises, concurrent receipt, SBP, reserve retirement, and other needs.
Needless to say, we expect to see some late-night oil burning on Capitol Hill this month.
Pentagon Plans to Drop ID Card SSAN
Last year, MOAA urged the House and Senate Armed Services Committees to explore options to protect servicemembers from identity theft by removing the Social Security account number (SSAN) from military ID cards.
The fallout was a provision in the FY2007 Defense Authorization Act that tasked the Pentagon for a report and recommendations on how to address this pressing issue.
The Pentagon report, forwarded to Congress in July by Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness) David Chu, cited the difficulties of moving entirely away from use of the SSAN, which is fundamental to all of the services' personnel records and innumerable embedded networks of security and record-keeping systems.
However, it acknowledged that the current system poses problems that need to be addressed and said the Defense Department intends to phase out the use of the printed SSAN on ID cards over the next several years.
The plan is to move to an ID card that would print only the last four digits of the SSAN, with the full SSAN electronically encrypted on the card. This would provide additional protection to the individual members while still preserving data deemed essential for hundreds of purposes, from validating commissary check purchases to confirming the identities of prisoners of war.
The reason for the multi-year phase-out is to allow time to convert the large numbers of hardware and software systems to conform to the new card, and also to allow a phased replacement of more than three million ID cards of current members, retirees, family members, and survivors so ID card facilities aren't overwhelmed.
MOAA recognizes that making changes on such fundamental data elements is never easy or quick. We commend the Armed Services Committees for pressing the issue and Defense leaders for acknowledging the problem and initiating a plan to address it.
Disability Commission Offers 100+ Recommendations
The Veterans' Disability Benefits Commission met again this week to make final adjustments on more than 100 recommendations to be included in its October 1 report to the President and Congress. Final recommendations adopted include:
- DoD should reassess the policy of allowing separation without compensation for individuals with less than eight years of service who are found to have a pre-existing disability and are medically unfit for service.
- Eliminate the premium servicemembers now pay for traumatic injury coverage under Servicemembers' Group Life Insurance.
- Change the VA compensation start date to the effective date of the VA award.
- Increase Special Monthly Compensation to address more profound impacts on quality of life.
- Authorize VA to provide support services for families of severely injured veterans similar to those provided by DoD.
- Establish new VA rating criteria specific to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
- Establish a holistic VA approach to PTSD that couples treatment, compensation, and vocational assessment in the evaluation process every 2-3 years to encourage wellness.
- VA and DoD should adopt a uniform and consistent policy for rating disabilities.
The Commission also expressed support for the six major recommendations of the Dole/Shalala Commission, with two exceptions. First, the Disability Commission believes equal treatment and compensation should apply regardless of whether the disability is combat-related or not. Second, the Disability Commission does not support the Dole/Shalala proposal that would terminate a portion of VA compensation when the veteran attains Social Security eligibility. MOAA strongly agrees with the Commission's concerns on those two points.
Read more about the Dole/Shalala Commission's recommendations.
The Disability Commission is scheduled to meet publicly on September 19-21 at the Washington Plaza Hotel in Washington, DC to finalize its report.
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