House Passes 2010 NDAA, Senate Version Begins to Advance
6/29/09 - Progress on the fiscal year 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) continues as the House passed its version (H.R. 2647) by a vote of 389 to 22 on 6/25. The Senate Armed Services Committee approved its version of the bill on the same day and sent it to the full chamber for action. 

Both bills contain key NAUS priorities: no increase in TRICARE fees or deductibles; a 3.4% pay raise for active duty troops (0.5% higher than the Administration requested), and an expansion of TRICARE Standard to “Gray Area Retirees” (Guard and Reserve retirees who have not yet reached age 60 when retirement benefits begin). See proposed 2010 pay chart (3.4% raise) here.

President Obama threatened to veto the NDAA if it contained funding for additional F-22 Raptor fighter aircraft and the provision to develop an alternative engine for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter. Two of the cost cutting measures that Secretary of Defense Gates announced earlier this year were the capping of numbers of F-22 fighters at a total of 187 and the end of efforts to develop a second choice engine for the F-35. Both versions of the NDAA include additional funding for both of these programs.

Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman, indicated the full Senate could take up the bill for debate shortly after lawmakers return from the Fourth of July recess.

Earlier in the week, the House passed H.R. 2990, the Disabled Military Retiree Relief Act of 2009, extending funding of concurrent receipt for Chapter 61 military retirees (see story here). This bill was then included as part of the 2010 NDAA (H.R. 2647).

NAUS Note: We applaud the inclusion of Chapter 61 retirees, but we note that this proposal falls far short of our goal for full concurrent receipt for all military retirees, regardless of percentage of disability.

House Appropriations Committee Cuts Defense Budget
6/9/09 - The House Appropriations Committee, chaired by Rep. David Obey (D-WI), cut $3.5 billion from President Obama's defense budget request of $533.8 billion for 2010. Specifics will have to be worked out by the Committee’s defense appropriations subcommittee, expected to complete its defense funding bill next month.

Congress Approves 2010 Budget
4/29/09 - Congress passed a nonbinding $3.56 trillion budget resolution for the 2010 fiscal year that contains some good news for current and retired military members as well as veterans. The final resolution calls for $606 billion for DoD and $106.5 billion for the VA.  It also contains provisions for several important items that are high on the NAUS list of legislative goals. The agreement contains wording, based upon Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman, Sen. Daniel Akaka’s (D-HI) bill S. 423, which would provide for a one year advanced funding for veteran’s health care.  This is important, as it would allow the VA to know ahead of time how much money they would have to continue programs and care for ill and wounded veterans. The resolution also contains provisions that leave room for a 3.4% pay raise for active duty servicemembers and full TRICARE funding—two key NAUS goals.

Military Construction Funding in Economic Stimulus Bill
2/18/09 - The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, commonly called the economic stimulus bill or package, H.R. 1, was signed into law by President Obama. The bill includes nearly $3 billion in military construction funds to repair and modern-ize military facilities. Senate Appropriations Committee members say $2.3 billion of the funds are for quality of life and "family-friendly" military construction projects - including barracks, family housing, child-care centers, and health and dental clinics on US bases. Another major element in the bill is $481 million for new or expanded facilities to take care of medical and social service needs for our wounded warriors and their families.   

Recent NAUS News Releases

6.18.09
Senate Testimony Calls for Strong Defense

5.06.09
White House Gives Welcome News to NAUS: No TRICARE Fee Increase 

5.05.09
NAUS Urges Repeal of the Unfair “Widow’s Tax” at Capitol Hill news conference

4.24.09
NAUS Speaks Out in Support of Wounded Warriors Suffering from PTSD and TBI

4.07.09
President Obama Urged to Stop Any Effort to Raise TRICARE Fees

2.05.09
NAUS Elected to Lead New Alliance on Military Voting Rights


More NAUS News Releases

2010 Adminsitration Budget Roll-out
5/7/09 - Details of the Administration's 2010 budget proposals were made public. Let's look at two with the most impact on NAUS members and supporters, the VA and DoD budgets:

VA Budget - The VA budget proposal, at $112.8 billion, is $6 billion higher than the budget resolution recently agreed to by Congress. This is a 15.5% increase over 2009, the largest percentage increase requested for VA in more than 30 years.

VA’s budget request contains four major categories of activities: creating a reliable management infrastructure, delivering ongoing services, making progress on Departmental priorities, and instituting new initiatives critical to meeting the needs of veterans now and in the future.

Nearly two-thirds of the increase ($9.6 billion) would go to mandatory programs (up 20%); the remaining third ($5.6 billion) would be discretionary funding (up 11%). The total budget would be almost evenly split between mandatory funding ($56.9 billion) and discretionary funding ($55.9 billion).

VA's new budget request provides for an estimated 122,000 more patients to be treated over the current year.Many of these patients will have multiple visits in the course of the year. VA expects to end fiscal year 2010 with nearly 6.1 million individual patients having received care, including 419,000 Veterans of the Iraqand Afghanistan war zones who separated from service.

For more information read the VA Budget Executive Summary here.

Defense Budget - The Administration is proposing a defense budget of $663.8 billion for fiscal 2010.  The budget request for the Department of Defense (DoD) includes $533.8 billion in discretionary budget authority to fund base defense programs and $130 billion to support overseas contingency operations, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The proposed DoD base budget represents an increase of $20.5 billion over the $513.3 billion enacted for fiscal 2009, an increase of 4%.

The fiscal 2010 budget proposal will end the planned use of supplemental requests to fund overseas operations, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The inclusion of these expenses as a separate category in the department’s annual budget request will ensure greater transparency and accountability to Congress and the American people. The budget will also request funds in the base amount, previously included in supplemental requests, for programs such as those supporting our military families and providing long-term medical care to injured service members. And, as promised in a phone call from the White House to NAUS (see story here) there is NO request for TRICARE fee increases.

The original Budget blueprint outlined plans to expand Concurrent Receipt for medically retired (Chapter 61) military retirees. The DoD budget does not mention anything about this issue. Researching this lack of information, NAUS was told that those details are not yet available from DoD.

Senate Report on Treatment of Detainees Released
12/12/08 - Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) and Ranking Member John McCain (R-AZ) released the executive summary and conclusions of the Committee’s report of its inquiry into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody (the full report remains classified). The report was approved by a voice vote without dissent, but only 17 of the committee’s 25 members were present. The genesis of the decision to use coercive techniques, the report said, was a memo signed by President Bush in February 2002, declaring that the Geneva Convention's standards for humane treatment did not apply to captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Sen. McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said in a statement, "The Committee's report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody."  He went on to say, "These policies are wrong and must never be repeated."

Retired Officers Discuss Interrogation Policy
12/4/08 – 14 retired flag and general officers opposed to harsh interrogation techniques are pressing President Obama's administration to establish a single, inter-nationally accepted standard for the treatment of detainees by the U.S. "Fundamentally, those kinds of techniques are ineffective," said John D. Hutson, RADM, USN (Ret), a former judge advocate general. "Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough." The group, part of a larger number of retired senior officers brought together 3 years ago by Human Rights First, has also released a video. NAUS Member Charles P. Otstott, LTG, USA (Ret), former Deputy Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, is a member of this group and is featured on the video.