It’s that time of year, when MOAA members from across the country travel to Washington, D.C., to advocate on behalf of the uniformed services community. 

This year, the main intent and approach for our Advocacy in Action (AiA) campaign remain the same. Dozens of our hardest-working members will interact with members of Congress. These MOAA council and chapter members have established relationships with lawmakers, and their grassroots support — 365 days a year — really fuels our work here at national MOAA.

As always, we need involvement from all of you at home. Your letters and calls to your lawmakers help create “surround sound” messaging to Congress and its staff.

[ADVOCACY IN ACTION 2025 : Focus Areas and Helpful Resources]

What has changed for 2025? Our Government Relations team has developed a few new strategies to help make our efforts even more effective:

Focusing on Five Priorities. Our team has outlined five key issues, not just for AiA but for the two years of the 119th Congress. In recent spring campaigns, MOAA selected two or three key issues from our legislative priorities. Five gives a more holistic picture.

These priorities — selected based on a variety of factors, including MOAA’s mission to protect earned pay and benefits, areas of greatest impact, areas aligned with our expertise, and areas where conditions appear conducive to success — are:

• Unaccompanied Housing Improvements: MOAA seeks to improve funding and condition transparency by requiring an annual, publicly available report, which will highlight areas that need the most attention from DoD and Congress.
  
  
• Ending the Wait Report: MOAA will proactively partner with other veterans service organizations to advance legislation that will lessen the time that veterans must wait before their toxic exposures are acknowledged by the VA.
  
  
• Military Spouse Hiring Act: Passage of this bill will allow businesses that hire military spouses to claim a tax credit, incentivizing them to hire more military spouses.
  
  
• Military Health System Access to Care: MOAA seeks legislation for a digital access assistance platform that would allow beneficiaries to report challenges accessing care.
  
  
• Veterans Caregiving Support Improvements Legislation: This bill includes enhancements to the VA Program of Comprehensive Assistance for Family Caregivers and expansion of home health and long-term care services.

[ADVOCACY PLAYBOOK: What You Should Know About MOAA’s Key Issues]

Tailoring the message. We will brief each lawmaker’s office on no more than three of our priorities. We will be selecting which three based on the lawmaker’s own goals or demonstrated interest areas. We believe speaking to the issues they care about most will lead to positive outcomes.

Scheduling support. This year, we have hired Soapbox Consulting to assist with scheduling office visits for all our key meetings instead of delegating that task to our MOAA volunteers. Now our advocates can devote more time to getting smart on our issues and practicing their delivery.

[RELATED: Advocacy in Action Video Playlist]

As we move out on this strategy, know there are overarching issues so important to our members and our nation that should they be placed at risk, MOAA stands ready to use all available resources to:

• PROTECT the value of service-earned health benefits from new TRICARE fees, disproportionate TRICARE cost-share increases, or barriers to accessing care in the military health system or through the VA.
• PRESERVE the pay earned by those in uniform, to include scheduled pay increases, and established concurrent receipt provisions and eligibility.
• PREVENT burdensome delays in VA claims processing and/or reduction of earned VA benefits.
• DEFEND the veterans and military spouses who continue their service in the federal government – and other federal employees who serve veterans.

Like every year, we will be tracking what works and what doesn’t during our AiA campaign, so we can make needed adjustments in 2026. Your feedback is always welcome. Thank you again to all our MOAA advocates.