CWOA ADVOCACY AND PRIORITIES

By: Aniela Szymanski, Chief Policy Officer

CWOA members sharing their challenges, concerns and ideas for improvement is vital to establishing advocacy priorities for CWOA. The traditional structure for feeding those to the organization leadership has been through the chapter and committee structure. Ideally, chapters will get to know what the challenges, concerns and ideas are for chapter membership and inform the organization through its committees to ensure CWOA advocates for them.

Access to the currently serving population is crucial to accomplishing that. Policy changes in early 2025 have made that access more limited, and in some respects impossible, with organizations such as CWOA being prohibited from participating in certain activities aboard installations and restricting communication methods with the active duty force. CWOA will continue to work with chapters and with command leadership at installations where possible to improve communication and access so that your voices are heard in government. Virtual, as well as offsite meetings and only communicating with active duty members when off duty have provided some avenues, but chapters will continue to have to be creative in obtaining this information.


CWOA advocates on multiple levels and with various agencies. Namely, CWOA advocates to two branches of government: Congressional and Executive.  Occasionally CWOA will chime in on pending judicial cases when the cases impact military pay or benefits, but those instances are rare.
To Congress, CWOA advocates for adequate funding for matters that impact our members. For instance, annual pay raises, continued pay during government shutdowns, Basic Allowance for Housing, healthcare, incentive and special duty pay. Other matters that Congress dictates and that CWOA advocates for are transition assistance programs, improving PCS assistance, and continuing benefits like Commissary and child care. This includes educating Congressional staffers on the issues presenting Coast Guard members and their families, meeting and communicating with Members of Congress, writing letters of support and opposition to legislation that has been introduced, or that CWOA would like to see introduced.


To the Executive Branch, CWOA advocates to Coast Guard leadership, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Defense. This includes matters such as billets, professional development, base access, health care access and similar career and personal matters. CWOA communicates with the Commandant of the Coast Guard’s office, DHS and DoD leaders as well as advisory groups to ensure that matters affecting Coast Guard members are addressed and considered in policy making.


Key issues CWOA is advocating for in the upcoming legislative year:


Continued and adequate funding to ensure there are no pay lapses for Coast Guard members, and that service members do not suffer setbacks in their career professional development as a result of the lack of funding. The government is currently funded under a Continuing Resolution through the remainder of the fiscal year, but the funding concerns have led to the government cutting back on travel. The travel that has been cut back on includes travel to conferences and professional development association events. Military organizations theorize that the government is cutting back on authorizing this type of travel as a way to save money that will have to be directed towards fulfilling the military pay raises authorized in the recent National Defense Authorization Act, given that the Continuing Resolution freezes funding levels at the 2024 levels. This requires Congress to pass the funding bills and for the President to approve them.


Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) improvements is another area that CWOA, along with its Military Coalition partners, are pushing hard to resolve. Currently, BAH is paid to service members based on a calculation that is 95% of what rent and utilities in the area is calculated to be. There are two issues at hand with BAH. One, returning BAH to the 100% rate would provide financial relief to service members. This makes common sense that servicemembers should receive 100% of their housing cost. Second, members of the Coast Guard are in unique duty areas and the BAH calculations used by DoD leaves Coast Guard members stretching to find safe and adequate housing for their families that are long commutes from their stations. This requires advocacy both in Congress and within the DoD to correct.


Concurrent receipt of retired pay and VA disability compensation is an issue CWOA has been advocating for over the past two years. The current state of the law is that service members who retire with at least 20 years of service and who have a VA disability rating of 50% or higher, will receive both their military retirement and VA disability pay. If someone has either less than 20 years of service (e.g. medical retirement) or a disability rating of 10-40%, the amounts are offset and the service member cannot receive both. CWOA has, and will continue, advocating for retired service member to receive both in full.


CWOA will advocate for these priorities during the current Congressional term, as well as others brought to our attention by CWOA membership. Every member’s voice is important in this effort!