Reid - Combat-disabled deserve full retirement pay

Since 03-20-06

Article = Reid: Combat-disabled deserve full retirement pay

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Reid: Combat-disabled deserve full retirement pay
By Rick Maze
Times staff writer

The Senate’s top Democrat vowed Wednesday to continue his fight for full disability and retired pay for veterans who are eligible for both payments, with an effort to provide extra pay to those forced to retire from the military because of combat-related disabilities.

“This legislation is especially important given the injuries we are seeing in Iraq. Improvised explosive devices have created numerous amputees and, therefore, an increase in medically discharged veterans,” said Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., a long-standing sponsor of legislation to provide the so-called concurrent receipt of retired and disability pay.

Reid said disabled retirees have received more pay over the years as Congress has forced the Defense Department to break with a longtime policy requiring a dollar-for-dollar reduction in military retired pay when also receiving veterans’ disability compensation. ‘We have made some process over the last few years but, as everyone knows, we still have work to do,” Reid said as he introduced the Combat-Related Special Compensation Act of 2006.

Reid’s bill, S 2385, addresses people who served fewer than 20 years in the military because they retired because of disability. Under current law, only those with at least 20 years’ service are eligible to receive retired pay and disability compensation without offsets.

Those with combat-related disabilities can receive their full military retired pay and veterans’ disability payments while those with service-connected disabilities not linked to combat or combat-related training receive partial payments, with plans to receive both benefits without offset by 2009.

Reid said his new proposal “will take care of soldiers who had hoped to make the military a career but were discharged prematurely for an injury sustained in combat and forced to retired medically before attaining 20 years of service.”

“Right now, these soldiers receive combat-related disability benefits but are not eligible to get retirement benefits because they cannot serve out that required 20 years,” Reid said. “That is unfair. These veterans have been forced into retirement and we need to take care of them.”

In visits to military hospitals, Reid said he has encountered people in military hospitals who have sustained career-ending injuries after 10 years of service and have been forced to medically retire. “They will get medical benefits but they won’t receive legitimate retirement compensation because they have been injured and are unable to serve until retirement, as they had planned,” Reid said.

Reid will likely try to attach his bill to a piece of defense-related legislation later this year, and if practice runs true to form, the Senate will approve his idea. In the past, problems have surfaced when Reid-sponsored legislation is considered by the House, which generally has been less generous to disabled retirees.

The Pentagon has opposed most concurrent receipt proposals but President Bush has signed bills repealing or reducing the retired pay offset, and has trumpeted his role during speeches before military and veterans groups.

That leaves some congressional aides wondering how fiercely the administration might fight Reid’s newest proposal, especially because it applies to combat-related injuries.

The Military Officers Association of America quickly endorsed Reid’s bill. In a statement issued Thursday, retired Navy Vice Admiral Norbert Ryan, the association’s president, said, “A military retiree who spent at least 20 years in uniform and who has any combat-incurred disability no longer suffers under the unfair policy banning concurrent receipt.

But a service member who suffers a 100-percent disabling combat injury and is forced into medical retirement with 19 years and 11 months of service can still lose his entire retired pay. People in that circumstance should be vested so they don't suffer that penalty.”