THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 15, 1994 TAG: 9408150224
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 103 lines
It's just 50 cents a month, not enough to break anyone's budget. And because it's deducted directly from their paychecks, many service members don't even notice it.
But for thousands of enlisted soldiers, sailors and airmen, a 4-year-old law requiring that they help support a pair of retirement homes for veterans - homes there's little chance any of them will ever live in - is a nagging pain in the wallet.
And now the deduction might be about to double.
Compromise legislation drafted last week would allow the charge to increase to $1 per month, beginning in January. With the trust fund that finances the homes shrinking, senators had favored a $2 per month levy, while House members originally pushed for no change.
The bill lets the secretary of defense decide whether to actually increase the charge. Pentagon sources said that if the higher fee is authorized by Congress, it almost surely will be imposed. Pentagon projections suggest the trust fund will go broke by 2001 if additional funds aren't found.
Enlisted members have to pay ``whether you like it or not, whether you want to participate in it or not,'' complained Rep. Owen B. Pickett, a Democrat whose district includes parts of Virginia Beach and Norfolk. ``You can see how it would be an irritant.''
Pickett, who has been active in efforts to end the deduction, said his office gets a steady stream of complaints about it, particularly from new enlistees. The deduction is especially galling, he said, given that some military people earn so little they must rely on food stamps to keep their families fed.
The two homes - the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home in Washington and the Naval Home in Gulfport, Miss. - have colorful histories. The Naval Home was established by Congress in 1811 and opened in 1834 as an ``asylum for disabled and decrepit Navy officers, seamen and Marines.'' Originally located in Philadelphia, it was moved to an 11-story building in Gulfport in 1976. The Navy believes it may be the oldest continuous retirement facility in the United States.
The Soldiers' and Airmen's Home, opened in 1851, operates at its original site in Washington. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln was a frequent visitor.
The homes serve up to 2,550 veterans - 550 at the Naval Home and 2,000 at the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home - each of whom must be at least 65 years old, in good health and willing to contribute one-fourth of his federal pension for room and board. The homes are open only to former enlistees or to those officers with at least 10 years of enlisted service. That's why officers are exempt from the payroll deduction.
The board that runs both homes has approved fee increases, beginning in 1998, that gradually would increase the bite on most residents to 40 percent of their pensions. A few residents of the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home, who receive nursing care along with their room and meals, could see fees go up to 65 percent of their pensions.
A major source of funding for the homes comes from fines paid by military personnel for offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. But because service members most prone to commit offenses have been among the first to be discharged, income from fines has dropped, from $28.4 million in 1993 to $24.3 million this year.
And with the military shrinking, the homes' income from the payroll deduction went from $9.2 million in 1993 to $8.5 million this year.
The annual cost-per-resident at the Naval Home, $24,000, is slightly higher than the cost at the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home, but sources suggested that the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home is the big drag on the $137 million trust fund.
The reason is that the Naval Home, while just over one-fourth the size of the Soldiers' and Airmen's Home, draws support from payroll deductions and fines paid by all Navy and Marine enlisted members. The Soldier's and Airmen's Home gets its payroll deductions and fines from Army and Air Force members; those two services combined are only slightly larger than the Navy and Marines.
``I am proud of the fact that we have been able to maintain the Naval Home in a good financial position . . . and would hope to avoid an increase for our sailors,'' Adm. Jeremy M. ``Mike'' Boorda, the chief of naval operations, said last week.
Pickett, though, insisted that Congress and the Pentagon try to eliminate the deduction rather than just hold it steady. The $59.3 million budget of the two homes for 1994 shouldn't be an impediment to that, even in a tight budget year, he said.
``There's huge amounts of money here,'' Pickett said, citing creation this year of a $58 million ``slush fund'' in the defense budget for additional, unspecified aid to schools. He's all for school aid, he said, but if the budget can handle that, it can handle the retirement homes.
KEYWORDS: MILITARY RETIREMENT HOME by CNB