U.S. MILITARY - Major Reforms to Pay and Benefits

"Military commission lays out major reforms for soldiers’ pay and benefits" PBS NewsHour 1/29/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In light of soaring health and benefit costs for members of the armed forces, a committee created to offer reforms is calling for big changes.  Hari Sreenivasan examines the recommendations with Alphonso Maldon, chair of the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  Over the past 15 years, health care and retirement benefit costs for members of the armed forces has nearly doubled.  So far, efforts to rein in costs have stalled, as members of Congress and veteran groups have pushed back.

Today, a congressional-chartered commission charged with recommending reforms released their report.  They call for overhauling the health insurance system for military families and retirees and modifying the pension benefits for soldiers.

To walk us through some of those recommendations, I am joined now by the commission’s chairman, Alphonso Maldon.

Thanks for joining us.

So, first, I want to ask, how important is it for the military to carry out some of these reforms?  What’s wrong with the way things are now?

ALPHONSO MALDON, Chairman, Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission:  Our retirement system today, we have — the vast majority of our military really doesn’t benefit from the traditional retirement, military retirement.

And we have made recommendations, this commission has made a recommendation that we can actually offer more benefits or increased benefit to the — to those service members.  And we can best do that by a recommendation that we have made, which is actually a blended retirement system, which actually — and the blended retirement system that we are recommending is one that will leverage the benefits, the recruiting benefits of a government-sponsored thrift savings plan and the retention benefits of the traditional military retirement system.

And we add an additional continuation pay at the 12-year mark.  And so then we — by doing that, we’re able to provide more benefits to more service members, which will extend the benefit that is to about 17 percent now to up to about 75 percent of the force.

COMMENT:  As a retired Navy vet (22yrs) I can tell you that military pay has never kept pace with the cost of living.  Military pay is decades behind and this proposed increase will not like catch up.  There are military families who qualify for food stamps, for example.