Congress and the Pentagon have been at odds for years over how to handle military benefits as defense spending tightens — but that may change once a commission studying the issue makes its recommendations by the end of this month.
The Pentagon wants to put tighter controls on the growth of benefits costs, especially for healthcare and retirement. Officials say that growth is squeezing out spending in other important areas, such as military readiness, where the gap between spending and what the armed forces are being asked to do keeps growing.
But cutting benefits is a tough sell on Capitol Hill in wartime, one of the big reasons lawmakers have rejected most of the Pentagon’s proposals.
The Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission is expected to weigh in just in time for this year’s installment of the debate as lawmakers begin to consider the fiscal 2016 budget. The commission was created by Congress in 2013 to take the issue out of annual budget squabbles with a deeper look at the entire system of military pay and benefits.
“We will be doing vigorous examination of the recommendations,” said Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz. “We know that it has to be reformed. Everybody knows that it has to be reformed.”
The commission is expected to recommend an overhaul of military pay and benefits for the future, but that’s not likely to help the Pentagon much with its immediate budget concerns. Many lawmakers, including McCain, oppose the idea of benefits cuts for current service members as a breach of trust.
“I don’t expect it to have any short-term impact,” Rep. Joe Heck, R-Nev., chairman of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, told the Washington Examiner.
“There may be some recommendations in the report that may have some minor impact on the current budgetary window,” but most won’t, he said.
Also looming over the debate is the return of nearly $50 billion a year in sequestration cuts imposed by the 2011 Budget Control Act, on top of the $487 billion reduction in planned spending over 10 years.
Pentagon officials say personnel costs are growing faster than the rate of inflation and are unsustainable over time, especially if sequestration is added to the mix. But lawmakers have been more sympathetic to the arguments from military support groups, who say cutting benefits will make it harder to bring in recruits and will drive experienced troops out of the service at a time when they are most needed.
“This is what all the bean counters forget,” said retired Vice Adm. Norbert Ryan Jr., president of the Military Officers Association of America.
Ryan, however, suggested the commission’s recommendations may help ease tensions over the issue by establishing a framework for a more reasoned discussion and offering creative ideas to fix concerns shared by all sides, such as the cost of healthcare for service members and retirees.
“We’re very comforted by the way that Congress is going to be digging into this in a methodical way,” Ryan said.
The Pentagon’s past efforts to reduce military benefits have met stiff opposition in Congress. In the fiscal 2015 budget, lawmakers gave the Pentagon only a minority of the cuts it sought, agreeing to keep the increase in troops’ pay to 1 percent, freeze pay for general officers, increase some prescription medicine copays and put modest limits on the growth of housing allowances.
Lawmakers also are looking to the Pentagon to find efficiencies in other areas, such as in acquisitions, where the costs of new weapons commonly go over budget — before asking service members and their families to make more sacrifices after 13 years of war.
“DOD has got to get more credibility over here on the Hill,” Ryan told the Examiner after meeting with lawmakers last week.
“From my perspective, the Pentagon has a much more important opportunity and much more important job in trying to find cost savings in areas other than personnel,” said Heck, one of the lawmakers who met with Ryan. “We need to totally optimize the dollars that are already being spent.”
For example, Ryan said the Pentagon has been moving at a “snail’s pace” to consolidate the military healthcare system — which serves 9.6 million beneficiaries, including active-duty service members, retirees and eligible family members — into a joint command, which the Government Accountability Office estimates could save $281 million to $460 million a year. Though many functions have been consolidated, each service still maintains its own medical command.
Heck, a medical doctor and deputy commanding general of an Army Reserve medical unit, supports that idea, which has been opposed by military health leaders who say the different cultures of the services makes them incompatible.
“I don’t believe there’s a reason to have a separate Army/Navy/Air Force medical command,” Heck said.
