The start of combat-related special compensation (CRSC) for 35,000-40,000 military retirees with combat and combat-training disabilities and a standing veto threat from the Bush administration seems to have dampened enthusiasm in Congress this year to pass follow-on "concurrent receipt" initiatives.
Federal law prohibits military retirees from receiving both full retired pay and disability compensation for injuries or ailments that occur while on active duty. Retired pay is reduced, dollar for dollar, by the amount retirees draw in tax-free disability pay from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). For years this has sparked complaints from disabled retirees that they, in effect, pay for their own service-related disabilities.
Because CRSC addresses this issue for the most deserving disabled retirees, momentum to end the retired pay offset for the remaining 670,000 retirees with service-connected disabilities slowed on Capitol Hill. The Congressional Research Service, in a 4 June report on military retirement issues, said action on concurrent receipt in the 108th Congress, which runs through next year, "now seems unlikely."
Senator John Warner (R-VA), current chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, negotiated the CRSC compromise with the White House last December, calling it a "beachhead" in the battle for full concurrent receipt. Many who are left out, however, wonder if it is a beachhead or the final word from Congress on this issue. The answer will depend on whether lawmakers who continue to vow their support are sincere. So far, the signals are mixed.
No lawmaker, it seems, opposes legislation that would end the retired pay offset for retirees with service-connected disabilities. Some, such as Representative Michael Bilirakis (R-FL) and Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), have championed the cause.
Bilirakis again this year introduced the Retired Pay Restoration Act of 2003 (H.R. 303), which would end the ban on concurrent receipt for all disabled retirees. Through June it had 341 cosponsors. Last year, the number was more than 400.
Reid again strong-armed Senate colleagues to insert full concurrent receipt language in the defense authorization bill. Like last year, however, it is unfunded.
Representative Jim Marshall (D-GA), a House freshman and disabled Vietnam veteran, tried a new approach: a discharge petition to force H.R. 303 out of the Armed Services Committee for a floor vote. He needed 218 signatures. As of early July, he was more than a dozen short, and out of Democrats. Only one Republican, Tom Tancredo of Colorado, had signed the petition. Republicans viewed Marshall's petition as an attempt to embarrass them and House Speaker J. Dennis Hasten (R-IL), who knows, given last year's veto threat, that the Bush administration strongly opposes concurrent receipt.
Even Bilirakis, author of H.R. 303, balked at signing the petition. An aide said he preferred to work with House leaders to persuade them to support the Senate position during defense bill negotiations. Odds of him succeeding were slim.
The big obstacles to full concurrent receipt were cost and rising doubts over whether the remaining 670,000 retirees truly have been wronged. The cost of full concurrent receipt would be roughly ten times as much as CRSC, perhaps $5 billion a year, according to congressional analysts.
Marshall, in an interview, made all the familiar arguments for concurrent receipt, including that retired pay and disability compensation each is earned in its own right, so one should not reduce the other. He also suggested that it was an implied promise when recruits entered service, an argument that did not work for retiree lifetime health care when brought before federal appeals courts—and some of those promises were in writing.
Marshall shrugged off a common argument made by concurrent receipt critics, and more likely to be heard in the wake of CRSC, that many retirees receive VA disability for ailments caused by aging or lifestyle choices or that are reflective of family medical histories rather than the hardships of service life.
The 4 June Congressional Research Service report, which recounted popular arguments for and against concurrent receipt, said it "could lead to a windfall for people whose disability might have had a tenuous connection with military service."
"That's a separate question altogether from what I'm raising," Marshall said. "If we need to go back and rethink how we classify folks, disability-wise, fine. Let's go back and rethink what we're doing. But the deal that was struck is the deal we ought to be living up to."
The report challenges that point, too. The last argument made against concurrent receipt also is the final line of the report: "Concurrent receipt was never promised for those asking for it."