If you did not save the new simplified Legislative Updates procedures that were used last week, and need to refer to them, they are pasted after the updates below.

        We have One Action Item today at the first Issue

Issues

THE UNCOMFORTABLE TIE BETWEEN MILITARY WIDOWS AND DRUGS It’s there, and it’s a problem In his July As I See It column, MOAA Director of Government Relations Col. Steve Strobridge, USAF (Ret), explains why Congress should fix military widows’ compensation shortfalls without using drug money. CARTER SUPPORTS DEFENSE BILL VETO Long list of objections sent to Congress Defense Secretary defends pay raise cap, force cutbacks, and TRICARE fee hikes. TRICARE REGIONS, CONTRACTORS CHANGING North, South regions combining Most TRICARE Prime beneficiaries will be under a new contractor next year. MOAA AND THE MILITARY COALITION TAKE A STAND What’s sought and what’s not Letter to Hill highlights priority issues in defense bill.

 

Collectively We Can and Are Making a Difference

 

FOR ALL, Please feel free to pass these Weekly Legislative Updates on to your group of Veteran Friends –

don’t be concerned with possible duplications – if your friends are as concerned as we are with Veteran issues, they probably won’t mind getting this from two or more friendly sources

 

 

                            That’s it for today- Thanks for your continuing help!

                 Below is the new simplified Legislative Updates procedures FYI:

The unnumbered Issues as shown above are copied and pasted directly from the MOAA Veteran Legislative Updates as I receive them, usually on Friday each week, with the brief (usually) two line summaries as appear above. There will usually be 2 to 5 or more Issues each week.  Clicking on the respective brief underlined titles of the Issues will get you to an expanded text and maybe a video covering the Issue in more detail. Some of those texts may include additional links usually underlined and/or merely shown in color and may appear underlined when clicking on it. You can click on those links for additional detail at your discretion. And if there is an action item for an Issue, it will usually appear near the end of the text as, for example: “Send your legislators a MOAA-suggested message “.

 

Clicking on MOAA-suggested message will get you to the usual LEGISLATIVE ACTION CENTER where you will be able to scroll down as usual past Delivery Method: (leave Email checked  or check Printed Message if desired), and scrolling further you will see the Subject: and Editable text: of the draft message that can be edited on line if desired. Then after viewing the text fill in the Your Contact Information: if it does not appear automatically from your past participation. And at the end you can hit Send Message. After getting confirmation that the message was sent, seen at the net screen, you can come back to this Email and process the next Issue until you have done them all.

In some cases clicking on a brief underlined title will take you directly to a LEGISLATIVE ACTION CENTER message for forwarding to our Legislators.

 

If you have found it helpful to use the Here is the Process at the end of my past Emails that had action items (shown at the end of this message as a sample), I suggest that you copy and save that Here is the Process section as basic guidance for future use, as I do not plan to include this in future updates, unless I hear from enough of you who strongly want me to keep it. I have only had one request to date

And you might consider copying and saving Email with these instructions for use until you get used to the process as I will probably not be including this text in future Updates.

And in closing, be advised that I will continue to process State Veterans Updates as I have done in the past.

Respectfully,

Gene Fenstermacher