Gop Accused Of Going After Military Pensions Plan To Cut Retirement Originally Was Minor Way To Reduce Deficit
From the Pentagon’s top brass to the enlisted ranks, members of the American armed forces are accusing the Republican-led Congress of betraying them with a surprise attack on military retirement pay.
A plan, called “High One,” to reduce retirement pay originally was seen as a modest way for the military to help trim the federal deficit.
But since Republicans pushed the proposed change through the House National Security Committee with a party-line vote on Aug. 1, High One has become a sore topic for thousands in uniform.
What galls them is the undenied fact that High One would change the rules for approximately 800,000 people who are in uniform or have retired.
Take the case of Chief Master Sgt. Bill Lindsey of Robins Air Force Base in Georgia.
Earlier this month, the 45-year-old Lindsey was in a pub drinking a beer, celebrating his just-completed deal to open a pizza restaurant after he retires next year with 26 years of service. That’s when a friend broke the news about High One.
“I was kind of bummed out,” Lindsey said.
The change would cost Lindsey only about $40 a month, he figures, but right now, that’s a lot. “I made a decision based on what I had been told. I was planning on several months of just getting by because I’d used all my savings to buy this restaurant.”
Lindsey emphasized he was speaking just for himself, not the Air Force, but he need not worry. He has plenty of company in high places.
“To change the rules at this stage of the process is blatantly unfair and unwarranted. We cannot continue breaking faith with the men and women who are serving our country. Commitments must be kept,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a recent letter to Congress.
And Defense Secretary William Perry has promised “to drive a stake through the heart of this idea and get rid of it once and for all.”
While the military retirement system has been changed twice since 1980, this would be the first time a change would not be “grandfathered” in so that it applied only to future enlistees.
Instead of calculating a retiree’s pension on his or her final paycheck, High One would take the average of the retiree’s paychecks over the last year of service.
In effect, that would nullify much of the benefit of the retiree’s last raises before leaving the service.
The change would apply only to military people who enlisted before Sept. 8, 1980, because those who joined after then already have a less generous retirement formula. The Pentagon estimates High One would reduce affected pensions by 3 to 9 percent a month, with the larger losses in the $200-a-month range.
But the Joint Chiefs of Staff is skeptical about any predicted savings, because the change might cause people to delay retirements, thereby costing the government more in a final accounting.
GOP members weren’t thrilled with the change when they approved it, but other changes in their plan actually boosted overall military retirement spending by about $1 billion and High One seemed palatable.
They thought wrong.
High One is just one small part of a sweeping plan to fulfill the GOP’s promise to balance the federal budget in seven years. That plan won’t be ready for final approval until later this fall.
xxxx WHERE RETIREES LIVE States with the largest number of retired military personnel receiving Defense Department pay, as of Sept. 30, 1994: California 186,306 Florida 151,830 Texas 150,134 Virginia 98,200 Georgia 60,687 WASHINGTON 57,876 North Carolina 56,578 South Carolina 42,036 Alabama 40,896 Arizona 39,911 Colorado 38,508 Pennsylvania 38,327