Author: CBoPublisher:
ISBN: 9781481155441
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 50
Book Description
Compensation of military personnel takes up asubstantial portion of the nation's defense budget. In its fiscal year 2013 budget request, for example, the Department of Defense (DoD) requested about $150 billion to fund the pay and benefits of current and retired members of the armed services. As in most recent years, thatamount was more than one-quarter of DoD's total base budget request (the request for all funding other than for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and for related activities-often called overseas contingency operations).The compensation request involved four majorareas:- Current cash compensation for service members, consisting of basic pay, food and housing allowances, bonuses, and various types of special pay;- Accrual payments that account for the future cash compensation of current service members in the form of pensions for those who will retire from the military (generally after at least 20 years of service);- Accrual payments that account for the future costs of health care for current service members (under a program called TRICARE for Life) who will retire from the military and also become eligible forMedicare (generally at age 65); and- Funding for current spending under the militaryhealth care program (known as TRICARE), excluding the costs of caring for current military retirees who also are eligible for Medicare (the latter costs are covered by the accrual payments made in earlier years, just described).In all, about 1.4 million active-duty military personnel and about 1.1 million members of the reserves and National Guard receive current cash compensation, the largest part of compensation in DoD's budget. Cash compensation for members of the reserves and National Guard goes mainly to the 840,000 members of the Selected Reserve-service members who are assigned to and train regularly with standing units. Second in totalcost to current cash compensation, military health benefits are available to nearly 10 million people: active-duty military personnel and their eligible family members, retired military personnel and their eligible family members, survivors of service members who died while on active duty, and certain members of the reserves and National Guard.This report does not consider the costs of the benefits provided by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)- about $130 billion in that department's 2013 budget request. Those benefits include health care for veteranswith service-connected disabilities and for veterans who meet certain other eligibility criteria. Other VA benefits include monthly cash payments that compensate for service-connected disabilities and GI Bill benefits that reimburse some of the costs of higher education.This report also does not consider the costs of pay and benefits for DoD's roughly 790,000 full-time-equivalent civilian employees, other than for the 60,000 who are assigned to the military health care system and whose compensation contributes to the estimate of the total cost of delivering military health care.
