Military retirement under attack

[HeloDude]

...I'm almost sorry I asked. Actually, I am sorry I asked.

I didn't think the term 'docs' would be misconstrued for nurses, pharmacists, PA's, etc. Next time, instead of repeating your original word of 'doc', I will specificy "How many M.D.'s and D.O.'s..." Glad we cleared that all up.

[Guest]

...I'm almost sorry I asked. Actually, I am sorry I asked.

I didn't think the term 'docs' would be misconstrued for nurses, pharmacists, PA's, etc. Next time, instead of repeating your original word of 'doc', I will specificy "How many M.D.'s and D.O.'s..." Glad we cleared that all up.

Don't pretend that Physicians are the only officers that make the circus of the MDG operate. It takes a lot more clowns to make the flying community's life difficult.

[Guest]

The Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission released it's final report this week (https://mldc.whs.mil/index.php/reports#final). If you've been following the discussions about sequestration, defense budget reform, BRAC potential, VA medical benefits, retirement pay, and the other relevant concerns, you ought to know this report is highly anticipated and will dictate a great deal of debate and policy in the coming year. I can easily see this will slowly dominate and define many conversations over the next few months. They had 15 general recommendations:

1. Help more Service members save for retirement earlier in their careers, leverage the retention power of traditional Uniformed Service retirement, and give the Services greater flexibility to retain quality people in demanding career fields

2. Provide more options for Service members to protect their pay for their survivors

3. Promote Service members’ financial literacy

4. Increase efficiency within Reserve Component status system

5. Ensure Service members receive the best possible combat casualty care

6. Increase access, choice, and value of health care for active-duty family members, Reserve Component members, and retirees

7. Improve support for Service members’ dependents with special needs

8. Improve collaboration between Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs

9. Protect both access to and savings at DoD commissaries and exchanges

10. Improve access to child care on military installations

11. Safeguard education benefits for Service members

12. Better prepare Service members for transition to civilian life

13. Ensure Service members receive financial assistance to cover nutritional needs

14. Expand Space-Available travel to more families of Service members

15. Measure how the challenges of military life affect children’s school work

Obviously there is substantially greater detail on the specifics in the rest of the report. It's about 300 pages long (really only ~110 from just the raw text), and you're obviously able to read it yourself.

I'd like to post my own highlights, as I often do. Unfortunately, it's a bit to monumental for me to review it at present. Perhaps I'll add on later, maybe not.

[Dupe]

1. Help more Service members save for retirement earlier in their careers, leverage the retention power of traditional Uniformed Service retirement, and give the Services greater flexibility to retain quality people in demanding career fields

Number one for a reason. I'm glad the study recognized the immense retention power of the active duty retirement. Additionally, retaining those in demanding career fields will be come a big issue... not just for pilots. I have no idea how we're going to keep cyber operators (the 17D A-shreds or whatever they're called now). Those types easily command $150K+ in very nice places to live.

[17D_guy]

Number one for a reason. I'm glad the study recognized the immense retention power of the active duty retirement. Additionally, retaining those in demanding career fields will be come a big issue... not just for pilots. I have no idea how we're going to keep cyber operators (the 17D A-shreds or whatever they're called now). Those types easily command $150K+ in very nice places to live.

They split the career field again - 17D & 17S.

Here's a link to our 17X training guide which does nothing to clearly delineate what the different AFSC's are supposed to learn -

https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/saf_cio_a6/publication/cfetp17x/cfetp17x.pdf

[Learjetter]

"13. Ensure service members receive financial assistance to cover nutritional needs"

WTF? Either we'll all get full perdiem on TDYs...or we just acknowledged we pay our young'ins below the poverty level?

[disgruntledemployee]

WTF? Either we'll all get full perdiem on TDYs...or we just acknowledged we pay our young'ins below the poverty level?

That tub of protein powder isn't going to pay for itself! But on the serious side, perhaps they'll restore some of the commissary budget. Nah, who am I kidding.

Out

[HeloDude]

"13. Ensure service members receive financial assistance to cover nutritional needs"

WTF? Either we'll all get full perdiem on TDYs...or we just acknowledged we pay our young'ins below the poverty level?

The only young E's (E-1 to E-4) I have ever heard of needing to get food stamps were those who were married (wife probably didn't work) and have kids. But when you think about it, young E's get paid more than the typical college student working a part time job/getting loan or financial aid money (that isn't going to tuition/books)...and when I went to college, I never had to go on welfare to be fed and had a little money left over to clothe myself and drink some cheap beer. Young E's are housed (pretty well actually...better than I was as a college kid), are fed, are given free education if they want it, don't pay a dime for health insurance, and can actually save a little monry if they plan well. If I got married when I was 19, had two kids and a wife who didn't work, all by the age of 22-23 when I was still in college, then yeah, I probably would have had financial problems/could meet the requirements for welfare...but...wait for it...I didn't. And that wasn't by accident. Hell, I didn't feel I was financially or emotionally/mature ready to get married and have kids even before I was a Captain! If you can't afford to get married/have kids then you probably shouldn't. Last I checked, birth control is now free.

So just because young E's qualify for welfare doesn't mean they're not being paid enough. If they do it right, they can easily be ahead of their peers who went to college and graduated after 5 years and are still looking for a job--and I've seen plenty of awesome young E's who have done it.

Now I definitely believe our NCO's are underpaid because of the expertise that they hold, their leadership and management skills, their strong commitment and job performance, etc...at least the good ones, that is. And fortunately I would say I've definitely had the pleasure of serving with more good ones than bad ones. But even then, if you're an E-5 and think you should be paid enough to support a stay at home wife with 3 kids (while also have their flat screens, iphone, cable, etc) then I would say that NCO didn't plan well. Grant it, shit happens in life that people can't always anticipate, but if everybody practiced self responsibility, then this would just be the exception and further from the norm, especially in the military.

Just my $.02

[Warrior]

Just my $.02

Mostly valid, except comparing young E's to college students. Same age demographics, but that's about where the comparison ends IMO.

But to your point-I think it was #3 on the list of recommendations was improving financial literacy. I think that is the biggest key to all of this, unfortunately that's going to turn into more bullshit where we have to get 100% contact with the squadron and sit through more briefings taught by someone who doesn't know what TSP is.

[Guest]

So the forum system apparently hates the million quotes I used. I tried to ammend/edit the post, but it's just easier to read everything over at this forum.

https://afforums.com/index.php?threads/2015-retirement-pay-cuts.46543/page-2

And FYI, in case you didn't know this about my posts already, they are very, very lengthy.

Edited January 30, 2015 by deaddebate
broke the system with too many quote blocks

[Lawman]

Mostly valid, except comparing young E's to college students. Same age demographics, but that's about where the comparison ends IMO.

But to your point-I think it was #3 on the list of recommendations was improving financial literacy. I think that is the biggest key to all of this, unfortunately that's going to turn into more bullshit where we have to get 100% contact with the squadron and sit through more briefings taught by someone who doesn't know what TSP is.

Worse.

It will be a retired E-8 who spends the entirety of the class telling your E2/3s not to do something stupid like use a pay day advance to get rims or live pay check to paycheck, or how you can't bank on the money being there later so invest now. Of course they will have perspective having done all of that and more the entirety of their career and being lucky enough to become part of the paycheck of the month club.

[JarheadBoom]

Worse.

It will be a retired E-8 who spends the entirety of the class telling your E2/3s not to do something stupid like use a pay day advance to get rims or live pay check to paycheck, or how you can't bank on the money being there later so invest now.

Even worse.

E-8 (Ret) will tell all the young'uns not to do all those financially stupid things while mixing in some possibly-half-true "war" stories, but will not get around to discussing specific financially intelligent things until 2min before the class ends.

Been there, done that as a young E-2 in 1994. Still in the top-10 list of the worst mandatory briefings I've endured in almost 20 years of service.

EDIT: format

Edited January 31, 2015 by JarheadBoom

[Guest]

The active component of the Army will reduce its planned post-war end strength from the 490,000 soldiers proposed in the budget for FY 2015 to 450,000 personnel by the end of FY 2018. The Army National Guard will reduce its planned force structure from 350,200 in FY 2015 to 335,000 soldiers by the end of FY 2017. [...] reducing [the Marine Corps] from 184,100 end strength in FY 2015 to a planned end strength of 182,000 active Marines by the end of FY 2017.

Estimated manpower changes through FY 2017/18 are -8% for Army AD, -4% for Army NG, and -1% for Marine Corps AD. However, they cannot drawdown immediately (like the AF did) as there is a second OCO budget that temporarily funds most of these slots. Meaning their forces will have a slow shrink (which will likely have an adverse effect on morale, something the Air Force partially avoided). Separately, AF AD End Strength is actually going up from 315,300 to 317,00 (+0.5%). Also, the AF will begin re-balancing to a 55% AD and 45% RC (Guard and Reserve) manpower model (commonly known as 55/45) sometime in FY17--they don't give many specifics or numbers for FY16.

https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/documents/defbudget/fy2016/fy2016_Budget_Request_Overview_Book.pdf
Overview – FY 2016 Defense Budget Request
First, a summary:

MILITARY COMPENSATION CHANGES – RECENT SUCCESSES
Against this backdrop of a healthy and competitive military compensation package, the Department has done a significant amount of work to explore how we can slow the rate of growth in military pay, benefit costs, and individual compensation incentives in a way that is both responsible and fair. The Department has submitted numerous proposals in recent years to do just that, and some portions of which have been accepted and acted upon by the Congress. Authorized adjustments include --
• FY 2012
- Allowed a modest increase in TRICARE Prime enrollment fees ($5 per month per retiree family plan) and indexed the fees to the annual retiree cost-of-living (COLA) increase
- Required retirees in the Uniformed Services Family Health Plans (USFHP) to transition to the TRICARE-for-Life (TFL) plan upon becoming Medicare-eligible like all other military retirees
• FY 2013
- Permitted some increases in pharmacy co-pays structured to provide incentives to use generic drugs and the lower cost mail order program over retail pharmacies
• FY 2014
- Accepted an alternative basic pay raise of 1.0 percent vice the 1.8 percent increase equal to the Employment Cost Index (ECI)
• FY 2015
- Again accepted an alternative basic pay raise of 1.0 percent vice the 1.8 percent increase equal to the ECI
- Approved General Officer/Flag Officer (GO/FO) pay freeze for FY 2015
- Authorized the monthly Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) rates to be set at 99 percent (vs. 100 percent) of the median rental housing costs
- Allowed a $3 increase to retail and mail order pharmacy co-pays and required refills for maintenance drug prescriptions (e.g., cholesterol, blood pressure) to be filled through lower cost mail order or Military Treatment Facility (MTF) pharmacies

Now, the proposals:

The FY 2016 President’s budget proposes a 1.3 percent increase in military basic pay. This is less than the 2.3 percent increase under the formula in current law, which calls for a military pay raise to equal the annual increase in the wages and salaries of private industry employees as measured by the ECI. The FY 2016 proposed increased is 0.3 percent above the FY 2015 military pay increase of 1.0 percent.
[...]
Reduce Commissary Subsidy [...] The most visible impact to Commissary patrons will be a reduction in operating days and hours with most stores remaining open 5 or more days a week.
[...]
Consolidated TRICARE Health Plan [...] In an effort to encourage beneficiaries to seek care in the most appropriate setting and improve the overall continuity of care, the FY 2016 proposal includes fees for ADFMs that misuse emergency department care.
When fully implemented, the Consolidated TRICARE Health Plan will remain a generous benefits package. By FY 2020, the average retiree family will pay about 10 percent of total health care costs – well below the original 27 percent when the program was established in the mid-1990s.
Implement Enrollment Fee for New Tricare-for-Life Beneficiaries and Increase Pharmacy Co-Pays - In conjunction with the Consolidated Plan changes, the Department again seeks to adjust pharmacy co-pay structures and establish a modest annual enrollment fee for the TRICARE-for-Life coverage for Medicare-eligible retirees.

Co-pays for non-AD TRICARE/TFL

Increased pharmacy co-pays

Annual TFL enrollment fees (AKA no more free health care for retirees)

Again, this is the budget request from the DOD to Congress. This still must be heavily debated and legislated before implementation, but the fact that it is part of the request means that it is highly desired by the department, and if not approved this time, it will be included next time.

[Ripit31]

which will likely have an adverse effect on morale, something the Air Force partially avoided

Huh?

[deaddebate]

Huh?