When the House Armed Services Committee begins work Wednesday on the process of building the annual National Defense Authorization Act, it will have plenty of help from work already done. To date, Congressmen have filed 160 bills that are sitting in the HASC, some of which will find their way into the final bill, others which will not. There are a few clues to help figure which is which.
What’s in and what’s out? Here are a few educated guesses:
IN: PROTECTING THE MILITARY PAY DURING A SHUTDOWN
One bipartisan point of agreement is that no soldier, sailor, airman, marine, or coast guardsman should go without pay because Republicans and Democrats can’t come to an agreement over the budget. Service members and their families ought not suffer because of partisan wrangling. Republican Louie Gohmert of Texas and Democrat Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have both filed bills that would protect military pay during a shutdown.
Government shutdowns serve a political purpose, but that purpose is undermined when the men and women of the military are harmed. The average voter does not care much about the average Federal employee; in fact, when the average voter thinks about a Federal employee, the most likely image they have in mind is the person at the Department of Motor Vehicles who makes it difficult to renew their registration.
But service members are a different case. Each year, Gallup measures Americans’ confidence in institutions. In 2016, for the umpteenth year in a row, the military topped the list, with 41 percent on Americans having a “great deal” of confidence, and 32 percent having “quite a bit” of confidence in the military. Any legislation that “takes care of the troops” is a winner back home. This one should sail through.
OUT: RETROACTIVE RECEIPT OF NON-REGULAR RETIRED PAY
There is a limit to how far Congress will go, though, and Reserve Retired pay hits it.
Reservists cannot normally draw retired pay until they reach age 60. In 2008, Congress allowed them to draw their pensions three months early for every 90 days of active duty – after passage of that legislation. Since then, there have been multiple attempts to make that deal retroactive to September 11, 2001.
This year is no exception. Democrat Jose Serrano of New York filed a bill to set the date at October 7, 2001, the date the first American boots hit the ground in Afghanistan. But this idea is a budget-buster, which is why it hasn’t happened yet, despite multiple attempts by legislators with significantly more pull than Serrano. Carl Levin, who was Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, couldn’t get it done. It won’t happen this year, either.
ON THE BUBBLE: THE MILITARY RETIREE EMPLOYMENT ACT
This legislation from Democrat Derek Kilmer of Washington, would, for a period of five years, permit military retirees to transition into a Federal civil service job during the first 180 days following their retirement without meeting other eligibility criteria. While it initially sounds good, there are too many unknowns (especially the minuscule number of Federal jobs that the government can fill within six months of announcing the position) to give this initiative a realistic shot. Still, this is the kind of “feel good” provision that could make it through, even if it has little real impact.
