Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Mr. Stoffer, I have to applaud your dedication to the whole issue of veterans, and nobody can ever challenge that. You've brought issues forward that needed to be brought forward and fought them through.
On this issue, we all know what it's like when you are 18 or 19, or maybe 35, and someone gives you the book and says this is part of the employment contract and this is how things will work. Yes, everything's great, because all you want to do is start your new career and start your job. So you don't look at all of the wording that's in there about all of these things.
Everyone from the bureaucracy I have asked about this issue indicates that they outline all of these things: what will happen with the reduced benefits, the benefit reduction—not a clawback, as you often refer to it. But again, many of us wouldn't be listening. I always put myself in the other person's position. I wasn't really paying attention when I was 35--“It's a long way away and I'm sure it must be good”, and all of that.
The thing I'm concerned about is where do we go from here, recognizing that there are a lot of people who didn't feel they got the full information? But that was yesterday and this is today. How do we move forward? We don't have the money, being realistic here, and I'm going to be perfectly honest, I doubt it's ever going to go backwards. I'm talking about where we go in the future, about the changes we would look at happening, so that we make sure people know about whatever changes need to happen.
It was the union that flagged this originally, back in 1996, that asked why its members should be paying twice. They were the ones who pushed for this reduction, is the information I get from the bureaucracy.
Again, I don't want to go backwards, because if we had to try to do this retroactively, all of those people would have to turn around and change their contributions, right? So we're going to go back and ask thousands of other people to all of a sudden send us money to make up for what wasn't paid back then to bring it up to that level. None of that's going to happen, so let's just move it forward.
The changes that need to happen as of today are in our hiring practice, to get a sign-off from individuals, and more importantly, to move it forward so that we're doing this right, so that there is not a benefit reduction, because it is significant for people. So how do we make those changes for the future and not for the past?