Military Update: Congress debates early retirement for reservists

Military Update: Congress debates early retirement for reservists
By Tom Philpott, Special to Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Saturday, January 19, 2008

The $696 billion defense authorization bill for 2008, which Congress expects to return to White House by next week for a promised signature, has a host of critical pay and benefit initiatives for servicemembers at war.

The House passed a revised HR 1585 on Wednesday, removing a provision that would expose foreign governments to more U.S. court actions and which sparked the president’s veto. The only other change ensures that bonus and pay authorities suspended after the veto will be applied retroactively to Jan. 1 so that no servicemember suffers a veto-related financial penalty.

The bill’s 3.5 percent basic pay raise means that for an eighth straight year military compensation will rise faster than average private sector wages.

The personnel issue still stirring hard feelings involves, ironically, the first-ever step by Congress to lower the age-60 threshold for Reserve and National Guard retired pay. The bill says that for every 90 consecutive days spent mobilized, reservists will see the age-60 start for payment of annuities cut by three months. So a reservist eligible to retire who was mobilized for 18 months could begin to draw retired pay at 58 ½.

The razor in the cake is the effective date. The early retirement provision applies only to mobilization periods after the bill is signed. It leaves out more than 600,000 members mobilized since 9/11 for Afghanistan and Iraq and to respond to natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. About 142,000 of them have been deployed multiple times the past six years.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=51738