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Friday, June 26, 2009
NELSON: DEFENSE BILL SENT TO FULL SENATE ADDRESSES MILITARY SUICIDES, HEALTH CARE, OPERATION AIRLIFT AND BENCHMARKS

June 26, 2009 – Nebraska’s Senator Ben Nelson announced today that that the Senate Armed Services Committee has approved the National Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2010 addressing key personnel concerns and his call for benchmarks to assess progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Nelson, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Personnel, applauded the bipartisan support to address issues spotlighted in hearings he held this year. Issues such as military suicides, travel for stranded soldiers, health benefits, strains on military families and aid for wounded warriors, were addressed at the hearings and Nelson worked to make sure they were taken for action by policy and legislation in the National Defense Authorization Act.

“Our hearings clearly showed gaps in health care, suicide prevention, and mental health treatment. These gaps are having repercussions on our military’s brave men and women, and their families,” said Senator Nelson. “Our outstanding service members and their families sacrifice much and the personnel measures in this bill honor their commitment to preserve the freedoms for all Americans.” 

Two particular measures introduced by Nelson earlier this year, TRICARE Gray and Operation Airlift, were included in the committee’s legislation. The budget-neutral TRICARE gray measure ensures nearly 225,226 eligible retirees nationwide have the opportunity to purchase coverage under the military’s TRICARE health care program.  Operation Airlift, Nelson’s other stand-alone legislation, arose in response to complications Nebraska service members experienced in December 2007. Forty-eight members of the 110th Medical Battalion based in Lincoln became stranded at Fort Lewis, Washington,  when training was suspended and the base was shut down for the holidays. Military rules prohibited using military funds to pay for their travel back to Nebraska until training resumed. Operation Airlift allows the Secretary of Defense to use Department of Defense funds to pay for travel if a reserve or guard member is more than 300 miles from home and is placed on leave for 5 days or more because of training suspensions or staffing issues.

“As chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee, I have worked to ensure that what we learned from the hearings and discussions with service members and their families was addressed in this bill and reflects the needs of service members and their families,” Nelson said.

For military personnel, the committee allocated $163.5 billion to fund costs of pay, allowances, bonuses, death benefits, permanent change of station moves, and health care.  The bill, among its many benefits to military members and their families, authorizes a 3.4 percent across-the-board pay raise, 0.5 percent above the budget request.  It also increased the overall size of the force.  The bill authorizes fiscal year 2010 active-duty end strengths for the Army of 547,400; the Marine Corps, 202,100; the Air Force, 331,700; and the Navy, 328,800.  The bill also authorizes the Secretary of Defense to increase the Army’s active-duty end strength by 30,000 above 2010 levels during fiscal years 2011 and 2012 if sufficient funding is requested in the budgets for those fiscal years.

To address the rising stress on the force, overall mental health wellness and access to counselors, and the rising numbers of suicides in the military, the bill:

• Requires the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement a plan by September 30, 2013 to increase the number of military and civilian behavioral health personnel, and to consider the feasibility of additional officer and enlisted specialties as behavioral health counselors.

• To begin to address the capability gaps identified in mental health care, the bill authorizes the service secretaries to add up to 25 officers each year as students at accredited schools of psychology for training leading to the degree of Doctor of Psychology in clinical psychology.

• Requires person-to-person mental health assessments at designated intervals for service members deployed in connection with contingency operations.

To address stress and impacts on military families and military communities the bill:

• Requires the Secretary of Defense to undertake a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of military deployment on dependent children of service members, and a review of the mental health care and counseling services available to military children.

• Expresses the Sense of the Senate on various aspects of State implementation of the Interstate Compact on Educational Opportunity for Military Children and encourages all remaining states to enact the measure.

• Requires the Secretary of Defense to develop and implement a policy and program to provide broad-based community support to military children with autism and their families.

• Authorizes $30 million in impact aid, $10 million in special assistance to local education agencies affected by Base Realignment and Closure Commission (BRAC) and force relocations, and $5 million in impact aid for children with severe disabilities.

To address the care of wounded service members and healthcare of all service members and their families, the bill:

• Requires the Secretary of Defense to establish a task force to assess the effectiveness of the policies and programs to assist and support the care, management and transition of recovering wounded, ill, and injured service members.

• Authorizes travel and transportation allowances for up to three designated individuals to attend to seriously injured or wounded service members. Includes those with serious mental disorders, for the duration of their inpatient stay. Authorizes travel and transportation allowances for non-medical attendants of very seriously wounded, ill, or injured service members.

• Authorizes special compensation for designated caregivers for the time and assistance they provide to service members with combat-related catastrophic injuries or illnesses requiring assistance in everyday living.

• Authorizes the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Navy to jointly operate the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago and Great Lakes, Illinois – the first such joint operation between the Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

To address particular concerns of the National Guard and Reserves, the bill provides the following provisions:

• Authorizes travel and transportation allowances for reserve component service members on active duty for more than 30 days to travel from a temporary duty station to their permanent duty station and back again when training at the temporary duty station is suspended for five days or more.

• Authorizes the Secretary of Defense to provide any member or former member of the armed forces up to $200 a day for each day of administrative absence that the member would have earned between January 19, 2007 and the date of implementation of the Post- Deployment/Mobilization Respite Absence program, had the program been timely implemented.

• Directs the Secretary of Defense to report on the status of completion of various issues identified by wounded service members and their families and to report on the capabilities for electronic exchange of medical data between DOD and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The total funding in the defense authorization bill now headed to the full Senate is $679.8 billion, slightly below the President’s budget request of $680.2 billion for discretionary programs in the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee.

In addition to measures with regard to personnel, Senator Nelson continued to advocate for measures of progress for the new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Hi measure, adopted unanimously by the full committee, urges the Administration to establish measures of progress for its new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan and to provide reports to Congress every six months.  It urges the Administration to provide an assessment of each measure of progress by:

1. Setting forth the measure of progress being evaluated;

2. Providing data used to evaluate the measure of progress;

3. Providing an evaluation of the performance of the particular measure of progress and;

4. Providing a comprehensive assessment of how the performance of the particular measure of progress hinders or enhances the overall progress toward achieving the U.S. strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Pakistan.“The American people and the men and women serving in Afghanistan and Pakistan deserve to have a set of objective measures for the U.S. strategy in that region, so we can ensure it is the best strategy to achieve stability and success,” said Nelson.

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