Tom Latham: “The 2008 Defense Authorization Act included a provision narrowing the gap between active duty and reserve retirement…”

“The 2008 Defense Authorization Act included a provision narrowing the gap between active duty and reserve retirement benefits by allowing Guard and Reserve members to begin receiving retired pay earlier than the age of 60 if they had spent significant periods of time in deployments. This provision was based on legislation that I introduced, the National Guard and Reserve Retirement Modernization Act. The intent of the original legislation was to reduce the retirement age for time spent deployed, by 3 months for every 90 days spent on active duty over the course of a career, as an incentive to retain our best and brightest men and women. However, an erroneous legal interpretation has limited the qualifying time to 90-day periods wholly served within the same fiscal year, which causes many members of the Guard and Reserve to lose credit for some of the months that they've served.”