Reservists deserve chance to take retired pay earlier

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Subject: Reservists deserve chance to take retired pay earlier

Reservists deserve chance to take retired pay earlier

By Alex Keenan
Special to NavyTimes
28 November 2005


There’s a lot of talk lately on Capitol Hill about how reserve units are overextended and suffering recruiting and retention shortfalls.

One aspect of the equation that has to be at the forefront is the retirement system for reservists.

Currently, all reservists who complete the required years of service to become eligible for retirement must wait until age 60 to actually begin drawing their retirement checks.

There have been a number of proposals in recent years to lower the age at which reserve and Guard retirees can begin drawing retired pay, most recently an amendment to the Senate’s 2006 defense authorization bill. Under that amendment, reservists mobilized for more than 90 days could receive retired pay earlier than age 60 on a day-for-day basis. Someone who was mobilized for a year of duty in Iraq, for example, could begin drawing retirement pay at age 59.

Some might say that reservists have the opportunity to earn two retirements in their lifetime — a civilian pension and a military pension. But with today’s changing work environments, a pension from the civilian community is less likely.

Studies have shown that nearly one-third of the men and women surveyed about why they were leaving the reserve and National Guard still indicated “employment conflict.”

Today’s reservists have much more to consider in terms of commitments. Serving their country is one element; serving the communities where they live is another.

These days, many reservists are forced to make economic decisions when they are deployed and have grave concerns about the job they left behind. With the war in Iraq and the deployment of reserve forces for national relief efforts and other tasks, our reserve forces will spend more time away from their workplaces defending the nation, supporting a demanding operations tempo and training to maintain their readiness.

When you look at the amount of time spent fulfilling those military missions while also juggling family concerns and worrying about civilian careers, it is hardly unreasonable to call for an overhaul of the reserve retirement system.

Defense planners knew years ago that a potential problem was festering with the nation’s reservists and their civilian employers over how long they could reasonably be expected to stay away from their workplaces to fulfill their military commitments.

Today, that problem has only grown with extended mobilizations for the war.

Moreover, with reservists today spending much more time on active duty than even a decade ago, many more people are going to accrue the 20 years of creditable service needed to qualify for retirement at an earlier age. And that means they’ll have to spend longer periods waiting to begin drawing their benefits.

In essence, reservists are being squeezed on both the civilian and military fronts.

One thing that can be done to ease the pressure, at least on the military side, is to allow the reservists who are being utilized so heavily to start collecting their pensions at an earlier age.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that reservists would automatically get their full retirement pay at an earlier age.

Early vesting, for example, could give reservists a percentage of their retirement pay at an earlier age.

Conversely, most of the legislative proposals of recent years have sought to encourage reservists to serve longer military careers. Most of these plans have centered around sliding scales in which reservists could begin drawing retirement pay earlier if they agree to stay in uniform longer than 20 years.

These are not outrageous concepts.

As our military has changed the rules, and the utilization of our reserve forces has increased, reservists’ eligibility for increased benefits must change as well.

The success of the nation’s defense depends on the availability of highly trained members of the total force. We must ensure that we have a retirement system for our reservists that supports their mission, maintains the readiness of reserve forces and is fair to all our citizen-soldiers.

Alex Keenan, a retired command master chief, served 28 years in the Coast Guard. E-mail him at retired@atpco.com.