mike bski@BskiMike22802
FOLLOW-UP — clarifying yesterday's post on the Bost Amendment, because precision matters and I owe you the exact receipts, not just my word for it.
Here is the mechanism, page and line, so nobody has to take this on faith.
Page 1, lines 2–5: the amendment strikes and replaces ONLY paragraph (2) of Section 1414(b). Paragraph (1) — the existing "career retiree" rule already sitting in the U.S. Code — is never touched. Never struck. Never reprinted. It just... stays. Exactly as written. Forever, apparently.
Current, UNTOUCHED (b)(1): a Chapter 61 retiree with 20+ years under Section 1405, OR at least 20 years under Section 12732, gets routed to the old partial-offset formula.
NEW (2)(C), pages 2–3: a combat-related Chapter 61 retiree with LESS than 20 years under Section 1405, OR less than 20 years under Sections 12732/12733, gets the new and far better "lesser of" formula — full Chapter 61 pay or a 20-year-equivalent calculation, plus full VA comp.
Read those two side by side. Same two yardsticks. Opposite tests. Both written with "OR."
A reservist who holds a 20-year letter (20+ good years under 12732) but has under 20 active-equivalent years under 1405 — meaning nearly every Reserve and Guard Chapter 61 combat retiree alive — satisfies BOTH conditions at the exact same moment. He is a "career retiree" through one door and an "under-20 retiree" through the other.
Page 4, lines 3–6, the only place "paragraph (1)" gets mentioned again, tells you what happens if you qualify for NEITHER. It says nothing — not one word — about what happens when you qualify for BOTH.
Here is the part I actually want to say plainly: this is not a hostile bill. The (2)(C) language is precisely, exactly, word-for-word what combat-wounded Reserve and Guard retirees needed. Someone in that room understood the problem well enough to write the correct fix. They just stopped revising one paragraph too early. They opened the wound, found the bleeder, started the repair — and walked out before tying off the last vessel.
What is next, a bill that finally ends the wounded veteran tax for tens of thousands of combat retirees... wait, I was just told it might still leave some of them bleeding out on a technicality nobody bothered to close.
The fix remains one sentence: "Notwithstanding paragraph (1), a member who meets the criteria of paragraph (2) shall be paid under paragraph (2)." That is it. That is the whole ask. Drop it in before this clears conference and the defect disappears entirely.
