Healthy Reserves

The Senate on Wednesday approved legislation to extend year-round military health care coverage to members of the Reserves and the National Guard.

The measure was approved as an amendment to the fiscal 2005 Defense Authorization Act (S. 2400). The legislation would still require reservists to pay a premium to participate in Tricare, the military's health care system. The program would cost about $500 per year for individual coverage and $1,800 per year for families.

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., backed the effort. An earlier one-year trial of the broadened Tricare benefits was passed last year, but the Pentagon has been slow to put it in place. The amendment would essentially make those trial benefits permanent. The bill passed easily, 70 to 25, despite vigorous opposition from several Republican lawmakers, including Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"If we are going to do what we said we were going to do in our Memorial Day speeches-support the troops-let's do it with more than bumper stickers and rhetoric," Daschle said Wednesday on the floor of the Senate.

Opponents of the amendment said it would cost too much. In its first year, the program would cost about $696 million.

"That money has to come from somewhere," Inhofe said, adding the Defense Department's budget is stretched too thin to increase reserve health benefits. He said also that he has not heard from any reservists in Oklahoma who are interested in the extended health care.

"How many people [are there] out there who would actually want this?" Inhofe asked.

Minutes before the vote was taken, Graham heatedly answered Inhofe's allegations. He noted that Congress had appropriated $20 billion in fiscal 2004 for the reconstruction of Iraqi schools and infrastructure.

"This is about priorities and what we are going to do when we say we care," Graham said. "The idea that we can't afford this is bogus."

Closer to Open Seasons

The Senate Governmental Affairs Committee unanimously approved a bill Wednesday to eliminate "open seasons" at the Thrift Savings Plan. The legislation-introduced last month by Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins, R-Maine-will now move to the Senate floor.

The legislation mirrors a bill in the House that would get rid of the restricted contribution periods. Under the current system at the 401(k)-style savings plan, participants can adjust their retirement contributions only during two periods a year. If new federal employees do not begin their TSP contributions immediately, they are forced to wait for an open season to join and begin receiving matching contributions from their agencies. The current open season began on April 15 and will end on June 30. The second will run from Oct. 15 through Dec. 31.

Lawmakers, TSP officials and federal workforce advocates have all backed the effort.