Capt Hank
01-13-2005, 18:17
** Op-Ed Myopia
A Tuesday New York Times op-ed piece raised eyebrows among readers around the country by carping about the cost of TRICARE For Life, concurrent receipt, SBP, and other recent legislation. Author Cindy Williams, a research scientist at MIT, said the cost of these and other benefits are a weight on the DoD budget and don't do anything to help current retention.
Wrong on both counts. Congress, with strong support from MOAA and The Military Coalition, has shifted TFL and concurrent receipt funding responsibility out of the DoD budget to ensure that funding is additive to other DoD budget needs. And past experience has shown clearly that retention of today's force is, in fact, affected by retirement benefits.
MOAA President VADM Norb Ryan, Jr.'s (USN-Ret) January 12 letter to the Times provided a forceful rebuttal to the "factual errors and ill-founded assertions" in Williams' piece.
See VADM Ryan's letter on MOAA's Web site at http://www.moaa.org/Legislative/NYT_Ltr.pdf.
Williams' op-ed piece can be viewed at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/opinion/11williams.html (unfortunately, the Times requires a log-in procedure for access to editorials, and MOAA can't publish the text because of copyright limitations).
A Tuesday New York Times op-ed piece raised eyebrows among readers around the country by carping about the cost of TRICARE For Life, concurrent receipt, SBP, and other recent legislation. Author Cindy Williams, a research scientist at MIT, said the cost of these and other benefits are a weight on the DoD budget and don't do anything to help current retention.
Wrong on both counts. Congress, with strong support from MOAA and The Military Coalition, has shifted TFL and concurrent receipt funding responsibility out of the DoD budget to ensure that funding is additive to other DoD budget needs. And past experience has shown clearly that retention of today's force is, in fact, affected by retirement benefits.
MOAA President VADM Norb Ryan, Jr.'s (USN-Ret) January 12 letter to the Times provided a forceful rebuttal to the "factual errors and ill-founded assertions" in Williams' piece.
See VADM Ryan's letter on MOAA's Web site at http://www.moaa.org/Legislative/NYT_Ltr.pdf.
Williams' op-ed piece can be viewed at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/opinion/11williams.html (unfortunately, the Times requires a log-in procedure for access to editorials, and MOAA can't publish the text because of copyright limitations).