A QCD is a direct transfer of funds from your IRA custodian, payable to a qualified charity like We Care For America. QCDs can be counted toward satisfying your required minimum distribution for the year as long as certain rules are met. In addition to the benefits of giving to a charity (We Care For America), a QCD excludes the amount donated from taxable income, which is unlike regular withdrawals from an IRA. Keeping your taxable income lower may reduce the impact to certain tax credits and deductions, including Social Security and Medicare.

• You must be 70 ½ or older to be eligible to make a QCD
• The maximum annual amount that can qualify for a QCD is $100,000. This applies to the sum of QCDs made to one or more charities in a calendar year. (If you file taxes jointly, your spouse can also make a QCD from his or her own IRA within the same tax year for up to $100,000.)
• For a QCD to count towards your current year’s RMD, the funds must come out of your IRA by your RMD deadline, generally December 31
• Funds distributed directly to you, the IRA owner, and which you then give to the charity do not qualify as a QCD
• The charity must be a 501(c)(3) organization (which We Care For America is), eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions

If you are at an age where you are required to take minimum distributions and are supporting or wish to support a qualifying charitable organization (like We Care For America), you may want to consider this planning technique.

For better understanding or your tax consequences, consult your tax or financial advisor.

This initiative has bicameral, bipartisan support— the Chairmen and Ranking Members of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees are in agreement about this effort. The Senate and House Armed Services Committees have stressed the need to address historical end strength shortfalls, particularly in the Army. The primary purposes of Section 1053 are to increase the readiness and strength of the Guard, and to accommodate a review of adverse actions above state levels. To address end strength, Congress wants the Guard to backfill every technician transferred to Title 5.

The National Guard Technician Act of 1968 established a workforce to support the readiness of the National Guard in each state commanded and controlled by their Governor. Dual Status Technicians are employed in administration and training, and for the maintenance and repair of supplies issued to the National Guard. While performing these duties they must be a military member, hold military grade specific to their position, and wear the uniform appropriate for the member’s grade and component of the armed forces. Technicians serve under the provisions of Section 709 of Title 32 of the United States Code. They are considered excepted employees, meaning that they are exempt from the normal civil service hiring processes, but have special conditions of employment. In this case, they must be members of the Army or Air National Guard and must be in a compatible unit assignment to their full-time position. Non-dual status technicians have no military obligation to maintain their full-time position.

Title 5 refers to the section of US Code that establishes the basic law for managing human resources in the Federal Government. Title 5 has its origins in the Pendleton Act of 1883, which required agencies to hire employees in headquarters offices based on merit, not political patronage. Over time, Congress expanded the coverage of the merit system, and established Government wide principles, systems, and practices in staffing, compensation, employee relations, labor relations, and other areas of human resource management. In essence, Title 5 is the “default” human resources system for Federal executive branch employees not explicitly exempted or covered by other statute. It treats Federal organizations with varied missions as a single employer to facilitate interagency mobility, guard against counterproductive interagency competition, and ensure equitable treatment of employees.

For the most part, the benefit package for Title 32 technicians and Title 5 civilians is identical. Pay and allowances, health care, retirement, Thrift Savings Plan participation, holidays and time off provisions are all the same. Some differences include compensatory time off (technicians) versus payment of overtime (civilians); military uniform worn (technicians) versus appropriate business clothes (civilians); grade restrictions; rank restrictions; supervisory channels (State TAG versus Service Secretary); bonuses and incentives (technicians do not qualify but civilians do); priority placement program; adverse action appeal; promotions and transfers; union representation; and EEO complaints. Federal employees cannot use TRICARE for medical coverage, and conversion does not change this.

The timing of the transfer is yet to be determined. Section 1088 of S. 2943, the Fiscal Year 2017 National Defense Authorization Act would delay the implementation date from January 1, 2017 to October 1, 2017. However, the Senate and House Armed Services Committees are conferencing their respective bills, and we will not know the outcome of this provision until November or December 2016. The bill also includes language to grant the Chief NGB authority to appoint Title 5 civilians, currently reserved to the service secretaries and defense secretary. Other language in the bill affords The Adjutants General authority to supervise and administer Title 5 employees.

To date, the EANGUS National Office has not taken an official position. Furthermore, there were no resolutions presented, discussed, or passed by the delegates expressing a position or sense on the issue during our previous National Conference in New Orleans. Between annual conferences, the Executive Council has the authority to consider and determine the political posture of an issue, and when presented with this issue, chose not to take a position for or against NGA, AGAUS, NGAUS or the National Guard Bureau, until the Department of Defense reports back to Congress with a plan of how it would convert these positions. The Department was supposed to report to Congress in June 2016, but nothing has been delivered to date. Therefore, we wait. Thank you for your patience and understanding as we gather more information about the technician transfer initiative.

The eleven Clinton for America campaign people spoke about VA improvement, GI Bill preservation, and making government work. They talked about moving away from arbitrary budget caps, maintaining a strong commitment to White House initiatives like Joining Forces, but said they had no strategy for fixing the budget or cultural issues within the government.

The ensuing discussion covered such salient points as personnel compensation and the pay gap; privatizing the VA; impact on the defense industrial base; commissary; national defense strategy; health care and electronic health records; military readiness; survivor issues; and the uncertainty of the future.

The five Trump campaign officials talked about ending sequestration; not holding defense funding hostage to domestic funding; VA reform but not privatization; putting veterans in charge of their health care; protecting benefits; increasing defense funding; family support and jobs; transferrable licenses and certificates between states; suicide prevention; and how veterans are talked about.

The discussion included many of the same points from the earlier meeting. Other topics included women serving in uniform; perceptions tying women to sexual assault; VA Commission on Care report; Toxic Agent Exposure Act; Fairness for Veterans Act; the demonization of the VA system; other than honorable discharges and its effect on suicides; and personnel versus weapons systems spending.

Both campaigns believe there is value in continuing the discussion with Military Coalition members and conducting periodic meetings after the elections to ensure that the military and veteran voices are heard.

For instance, there were 106,364 registered representatives of the program (“recruiting assistants, or RAs”), not 105,000. There was no mention of Document and Packaging Brokers Inc., also known as Docupak, the prime contractor for the program, and employer of the recruiting assistants. It is important viewers understand that these 106,364 individuals were not performing National Guard duty—they were employed by Docupak.

Since the recruiting assistants were contractors, Army Criminal Investigative Division (CID) agents had no authority or jurisdiction. [Neither do they have jurisdiction over National Guard members in state status, such as on drill weekends. Jurisdiction of National Guard members in state status resides with each state’s Adjutant General, none of which were interviewed in the story.]

The 60 minutes episode stated that the National Guard did not have any internal controls for the program, even though the program was administered by Docupak, not the National Guard. Nor did it make mention of any internal controls the Army National Guard and Docupak had in place for the G-RAP program employees, the RAs. Oversight of National Guard contracts (such as Docupak’s) in each state resides with the United States Property and Fiscal Officer, an active duty officer, yet none of them were interviewed in the story. Congressional testimony confirmed that internal controls were, indeed, in place.

During a Congressional Hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on February 4, 2014, testimony stated that thousands of recruiting assistants committed fraud. However, with 106,364 recruiting assistants who worked the program, only 1,219 recruiting assistants were investigated by Task Force Raptor, 80 were found guilty and only 60 are still under investigation. The CID cleared over 105,000 recruiting assistants of wrongdoing as of May 22, 2016.

CBS stated that CID spent $27.9 million on Task Force Raptor which employed 60 agents. Independent estimates are that the Army has spent in excess of $40 million (they don’t reveal exact costs) and some allege costs as high as $58 million, and congressional testimony said that Task Force Raptor employed 200 personnel.

According to CBS, the Army testified to Congress that the fraud committed could total $95 million, and that $10.2 million has already been identified. To date, the investigation has surfaced only $2.3 million—which we admit is a lot of fraud but nowhere near what the Army testified to in Congress or what 60 Minutes reported.

The 60 Minutes program included two interviews with Lieutenant Generals from the active Army, but interviewed no one from any state National Guard, Army National Guard Directorate in Arlington Virginia, or National Guard Bureau. The two Lieutenant Generals interviewed were uninvolved with the three recruiting incentive programs run by the Army during the time frame in question: G-RAP, Every Soldier a Recruiter (ESAR), and the Army Reserve Recruiting Assistance Program (AR-RAP).  LTG Claude Vaughn (USA, ret.) was the only senior National Guard leader mentioned (not interviewed) in the show, but he retired in 2009 and had nothing to do with the G-RAP program from that point forward.

The 60 Minutes story made no mention that CID and the Army purposefully withheld disclosure of their investigation from National Guard leaders.

60 Minutes said Master Sergeant Jerry Wilson had been given a letter of reprimand from The Adjutant General of Colorado. This is a misrepresentation of the facts; the document used as an exhibit in the story was from the Commander, Troop Command, a subordinate command under The Adjutant General—another irregularity in reporting the story.

Unfortunately, the success of the program was omitted altogether. The Army Guard end strength grew from 2005 through 2012. Furthermore, the Army Guard employed fewer full-time recruiters because of the efforts of the recruiting assistants, who brought in over 150,000 new recruits with a 92% successful ship rate to basic training, during a critical juncture in the prosecution of the war. At a time where the cost of finding new recruits was $18,327 for the Army, G-RAP reduced that cost to $2,400, a savings of $15,927 multiplied times 150,000, totaling $2.39 billion. With a contract cost of $338 million and a savings of $2.39 billion, we’d say that the G-RAP program was highly successful.

Docupak informed CID of issues with fraud in 2007, but CID chose not to investigate until 2012. Indeed, despite reports of fraudulent activity, the Secretary of the Army did not cancel the recruiting incentive programs until 2012.

It is troublesome that CBS chose to use Specialist Aves, and $244,000 in fraudulent payments perpetrated by him, as an example. Specialist Aves was terminated by Docupak in 2007, but CBS failed to report that detail.  It also failed to report that the CID was aware of his case in 2008 and purposely did not pursue, and that the majority of the $244,000 of fraud committed was not in relation to G-RAP. In fact, the fraud was related to ESAR and AR-RAP.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, CBS never mentioned the pervasive loss of financial resources, promotions, careers, military status, professional licenses, homes, marriages, financial standing, legal defense fees, professional and personal reputations, or physical well-being of those accused but never charged or prosecuted with G-RAP fraud.

We believe the investigations of innocent Guard members must stop immediately. We believe that the Army now has a duty to each individual harmed by the investigation to restore their integrity and honor as if the investigation had never happened. It’s the right thing to do and encompasses three of the Army’s cherished values—duty, integrity and honor.