Another Innuendo Over a CBO Report: TRICARE For Life

TRICARE For Life (TFL) is an excellent secondary health insurance program supplementing Medicare for certain military retirees and their families.

Recently, the internet has been awash in mass e-mail messages and web posts—including at several reputable web sites devoted to the military—trashing President[-elect] Obama for allegedly trying to cut funds in the budget for health care for the military.

This is part of the message, allegedly signed by a “BG Bob Clements, USAF Ret (P38 Bob)”:

Seems as though our President Elect has placed a priority on cutting [TRICARE For Life] out of the budget as a means to provide funding for those things he promised during the campaign…Just another move to slight those of us who dedicated much of our adult lives to the defense of our country.

The e-mails (and posts) then provide links to a CBO report, dated December 2008, that indeed discusses possible ways of reducing the costs of TRICARE For Life—among many other budget issues.

As retired military, I naturally would oppose such cuts ,when and if considered by the Obama administration or by Congress.

And, naturally, I applaud efforts by individuals and organizations to rally opposition against any such potential cuts.

However, it is a different matter to make smears and innuendoes a part of such efforts—as has so blatantly been done here.

To set the record straight:

The date of the CBO Budget Options Report referred to in the allegations is December 2008. If my memory serves me right, Mr. Bush was still President, and Obama was still a Senator.

The CBO’s mandate is to provide the Congress with objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget. As such, I don’t believe that then-Senator Obama contributed to it or influenced it.

It probably took several months for the CBO to develop this report ( According to the CBO “This report is the product of an enormous effort involving more than three dozen members.”)

I do not think that Mr. Obama had much, if any, input to it—he was too busy campaigning.

When this alleged “military-slighting” President picked General Shinseki to lead Veterans Affairs, he said:

When I reflect on the sacrifices that have been made by our veterans and I think about how so many veterans around the country are struggling even more than those who have not served — higher unemployment rates, higher homeless rates, higher substance-abuse rates, medical care that is inadequate — it breaks my heart, and I think that General Shinseki is exactly the right person who is going to be able to make sure that we honor our troops when they come home.

During confirmation hearings, Shinseki said that if confirmed he would streamline the disability claims system; focus on unemployed and homeless veterans; take care of wounded veterans, those “bearing scars of battle, some visible and many others invisible” and that for the VA, “the single focus for transformational change should be the veteran — providing for generations of veterans, who have done their duty, the support and services they have earned and we have promised.”

These words and the promise to finally put some teeth in the “Support the Troops” slogan certainly don’t sound to me as coming from persons who would “slight” the military.

At the very least, we should wait to see whether an Obama administration delivers, before jumping to conclusions.