Mr. Chu and You

Since 02-01-05

BGEN Bob Clements, USAF, ret writes:

Subj: Mr Chu and You
Date: 2/1/2005 1:47:11 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: p38bob@deepwell.com 
Sent from the Internet (Details)

Over the last decade we have worked very hard to arrive where we are today with one of the best healthcare plans in America. Tricare For Life. There are some holes that need to be filled in the program but with the pharmacy benefits we have in place and the choice of who performs our treatment, I know of no other programs that can match it. It is entitled by Congress and embraces all military retirees and their eligible family members, both present and future when they reach Medicare elgibility.

It has merits that can enhance both recruitment and especially retention. In Washington, to keep it simple, the name of the game is money. Money is needed by politicians to enrich programs that will get them re elected. The re election game starts the minute a politician arrives on the Washington scene and it is an ongoing event that has no ending. So where do they get the money?

It comes from groups who make the least amount of noise when the booty, taken from the American taxpayer, is handed out by Congress through the appropriation and spending process.

High on the priority list for each politician is money for pork and funding programs and projects for their home districts and states..purpose...to get them re elected..

Just the way our system works...like it or not.... Mr. Chu's remarks, appearing in the Associated Press in papers all over the country, didn't happen by accident.

Chu, who has been on the Washington scene as a bureaucrat since the Carter, and following administrations, knows through years of experience and spouting off the same rhetoric, that traditionally, military retirees, up until recent times, were very weak in demanding and protecting those benefits they were promised and given by law.

He also knows from previous experience, they are very slow to band together in protecting those benefits... He is the willing lip syncher for the Secretary of Defense and the President through OMB.

He is experienced at doing this.

Both the President and the Secretary of Defense know this and use him as a valuable tool. That is what he gets paid for. Chu is not spouting off on all these positions on his own recognizance. He's a puppet being dangled on strings from higher ups and one doesn't have to travel far or use a set of binoculars to see who that is.

Republicans have over the years been great supporters of weapons programs and pay least attention to the personnel programs. So on the opposite side of the aisle are the Democrats whose priorities are , naturally, reversed.

People cost money and weapons platforms also cost money, but, they create jobs. They also create votes

What we need to do, for military retirees and as spokesman for our kin on active duty who are muzzled, is to see that sitting administrations, Democrat or Republican, create fair and balanced programs of both weapons systems and personnel expenditures and keep the promises they make in doing so.

So, here we go again. Quoting from the Wall Street Journal...... "Today retirees account for about 50% of all Tricare beneficiaries, up from 40% in 2000. To cover the cost of these new enrollees, the Pentagon has had to shift about $2 billion a year into its health-care accounts primarily from new weapons-program accounts. "It is quite painful to reallocate that money," says Dr. Chu."

As an economist, Chu must not have been doing much research on the issues based facts from a data base which would have indicated exactly how much money would have to been expended on future obligations made to retirees as a factor in the defense of the United States..

As a matter of fact, Sec 725 of the FY05 Defense Authorization Act (Public Law 108-375, signed Oct 28, 2004) transfers all funding responsibility for TFL to the Treasury Department, effective Oct 1, 2005.

That means the President's defense budget being prepared right now for FY2006 doesn't have to put up one dime for TFL, including drugs provided to Medicare-eligibles through military treatment facilities.

Treasury is now responsible for making all deposits to the military retirement and health care trust funds associated with these two benefit improvements...including not only the unfunded liability for current retirees, but also for making what used to be DoD's responsibility for making deposits to meet the future liability for today's active forces.

The military medical facilities may not realize it, but they get reimbursed (or at least the services get reimbursed) from the TFL trust fund for all care expended on Medicare-eligibles. And, the money put in the trust fund from now on is put there by the Treasury Dept, not by DoD.

Keeping this a secret and burying it in the NDAA, also serves Mr Chu in his efforts (orchestrated) to blame military retirees for taking money away from the war fighters.....what a rotten, stinking, way of doing business...

So what do we do now? We fight back, just like we've always done....

1. If you haven't done so, even as an active duty participant, join one of the member service organizations that form the Military Coalition. That is an over 5 million member consortium and Congress listens. It is, virtually, your "union" representation and Congress listens..very intently

2. Write letters to your members of Congress and the President. Let them know how you feel. Especially respond when your military service organizations, or grass roots supporters, are pushing an issue that affects your life and that of your family

Do not sit back and assume the other guy is going to do it for you. That has been one of our main weaknesses and we need to overcome that perception among our elected representatives, and also some of the hired puppets in the Pentagon.

Now, in this particular situation we need to let the President and his appointed cabinet members know that we are not going to tolerate the abuse heaped on us by the Secretary of Defense through his henchman, Mr.David S.C. Chu.

This is not a political issue, it is an issue of preserving that which was promised and that which was earned. The ball is in your court. You want to lose..Do nothing You want to win? Do something about it!

President's address
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
FAX: 202-456-2461
EMAIL: "President George W. Bush" <president@whitehouse.gov> 


Secretary of Defense address
Donald H. Rumsfeld
Secretary of Defense
1000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-1000

Under Secretary of Defense
(Personnel and Readiness)
Dr. David S.C. Chu
4000 Defense Pentagon
Washington, DC 20301-4000

How to reach your members of Congress http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/