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Legislation Report for February
By Tim Holme
Congress is back in session, campaign fever is rising, my mailbox is full of pleas for money I don’t have
and my telephone won’t stop ringing with calls from numbers I don’t recognize and won’t answer. It
must be a Presidential election year.
MOAA has published 34 goals for the current session of Congress.
For the complete list see:
htttp://www.moaa.org/Main_Menu/Take_Action/MOAA_Goals_and_Progr
ess/Selected_Legislative_Goals_for_2012.html. The reality is that only a
few of these will receive the attention required for progress. Although MOAA
has some 11 registered lobbyists working Capitol Hill on a daily basis trying to
get Congress to take action, that won’t be enough. This will be a particularly
difficult year to get members of Congress to cosponsor legislation. That
co-sponsorship is necessary for progress, but in an election year there is
reluctance to attach one’s name to any partisan issue.
To check on the status of bills currently working their way through Congress
that are supported by MOAA, and to check their co-sponsorship status, go to
http://www.capwiz.com/moaa/issues/bills/
According to MOAA, here are some important dates that we should be watching carefully in the next
couple of months:
The President will submit a budget proposal to Congress next month. We should then be able to find
out exactly what the Pentagon and Administration plan to do in order to cut $450 billion in defense
spending over the next decade. Pay freezes, manpower cuts, TRICARE fee increases and retirement
changes are all possible.
In late March, six weeks after the budget proposal, congressional committees are required to submit
their “views and estimates” of spending and revenues within their respective jurisdictions to the House
and Senate Budget Committees.
In April, House and Senate Budget Committees draft and mark up a concurrent resolution on the
budget, which sets spending limits for the year. It is quite likely that Congress will come no closer to
actually creating a budget than they have in recent years. It may actually be even harder this year
because none of them wants budget decisions to be used against them in the campaign.
In May, House and Senate Armed Services Committees will likely begin work on the FY2013 Defense
Authorization Bill, including any changes that may be imposed by budget resolution spending limits.
It’s never been more important for each of us to sign up for “Action Alerts” with MOAA. At the recent
Presidents’ meeting someone asked how effective our e-mails and postcards were. The answer was
VERY! That’s especially true if we take an extra minute or two to add a personal ps to an email or add
a hand written note on the postcard. It’s important to remember that while during WW II some 15% of
the population was in uniform, today it’s less than 1%. The same dramatic change is also true for
Congress. Taken as a whole, the Administration and Congress really don’t understand us. MOAA
says it’s “One Powerful Voice”. We are that voice, but only if we speak loudly and often. –
Tim--