Posted on 08/17/2010 10:08:04 AM PDT by Pan_Yan
“..plus free heath care for life..”
Wrong. We pay monthly for health care just like everyone else. It is, however, very affordable at this time.
Ridiculous. The nation has handled this fine for years. This is a necessary expense for one of the real demands placed on any government: defending the nation to secure its liberty.
In order to attract capable men and women to the armed service, the military has for years used the combination of moderate pay with excellent benefits to get some to stay for a 20-30 year career. (to the 40-50 age range...the physical age at which most can no longer keep up with young warriors.)
They endure long separations, extreme threat of death or serious injury, long hours, no opportunity for families to settle down, little opportunity to purchase and keep property until after retirement, and the burden of jerking families up every other year.
They won’t get people to put up with that crap for peanuts.
Gates and his stooges and bean-counters are out of their minds.
Gates is not the best. He’s a systemite politician bureaucrat. Everyone’s known that from the beginning.
These ideas will gut the military.
There’s no problem with the Marines having a land mission.
So the Secretaries of Defense have relied more and more on The United States Marine Corps to do their share of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now Gates wants cut back The Corps because they were and are successful?
That sounds like just another way to help the muzzie terrorists and hurt the American Military as part of 0bama's anti-American agenda.
Perhaps it is 0bama's revenge for what the Marines did to the muzzies on the Shores of Tripoli those many years ago.
Who better than The United States Military patriots to give up their military retirement and healthcare policies so that money can funneled into paying back those 2008 campaign contributions. (/s)
It is not the military’s fault or the servicemember’s fault that Congress continues to underfund the DoD to fund their socialistic spending programs. Why is it, that whenever the DoD brings up the costs, that instead of cutting inane and useless programs/spending, we talk about cutting the veterans benefits?
The health care is not free and it’s not for life. It is a modest cost compared to many external plans, but a retiree living on a modest pension feels that cost impact. At age 65, Medicare.
http://www.military.com/benefits/tricare/tricare-for-life/tricare-for-life-and-dual-eligibility
If a military pension was all that great, you wouldn’t see as many vets going to work right after retirement now would you?
Also, the retirement system is not an automatic 50%, That was the plan when I enlisted, but then they changed it on me to the High 3 plan. There’s the High 3 plan, there’s the Redux plan (~40%) and some others.
The U.S. military takes the prime years of a persons life, they promise these benefits in return for that price a servicemember pays.
The American service-member wrote a check made payable to the United States of America for the amount of “UP TO AND INCLUDING MY LIFE”. And they did so voluntarily.
Thank a Soldier, Airmen, Sailor, Marine or Coast Guardsmen for their sacrifices on your behalf.
Well, if you think that 50% after 20 years of fairly arduous duty and long separations from your family and sometimes death or serious injury — is too much/unaffordable, please go research and take a hard look at the retirement program for the civil service. Not only is it very generous, but it’s very difficult to fire one of them. Just keep breathing, don’t work more than 8 hours a day and collect retirement. And keep in mind that our current President is doing everything he can to increase the numbers of civil servants — that’ll set up a continuing unaffordable retirement program too. And there are far more civil servants than military — but they vote Democrat more often, I suppose, so don’t touch them and their retirement. /sarcasm off
See post #18
Serve 20-yrs of active duty and get back to us. You know, after 20-yrs of service where you are moved around the world, frequent assignments to hazardous locations where people try and kill you. And let's not forget your family, constantly being disrupted and moved, losing money because the government/military does NOT reimburse you for the costs of the move, they do move you but there are costs that they don't cover. Of course, the stress on you, the active duty guy, is nothing compared to the stress placed upon the wife and children as you ship off to gawd-knows-where for gawd-knows-how-long to fight (and possibly get injured badly or even killed, let alone get captured and tortured/killed). And then there are the promotion hurdles to ensure you can even stay for 20-yrs. Civilian education must be accomplished, professional schools attended, training certifications, job skills maintained and honed, deployments constantly, etc. . . it is not like you are a dentist or a shoe salesman.
Less that 20% of those that actually enlist make it to 20, so, let's take a look at the real problem—the HHS budget.
Concur..well siad. Gates deserves kudos...remember he had to take over from a SecDef who had become a political lightning rod...regardless if you thought Rummy was brilliant, or a total idiot..his “high visibility:” had made it near impossible for him to function effectively, especially in dealing with Dem controlled Congress..I suspect that Gates wanted to leave after the election, bu he truly loves, and cares for, the troops, and feared who Obama might appoint if he didn’t stay on...
Hmmm looks like I touched a nerve. Tell me where else someone can retire with 50% of their income (OK 33% of real income) at basically 40-45 years old? Not even cops have it that good. Also if you look historically this has never been the case and as I said it is unaffordable long term, I don’t care how much you guys belly ache about what a raw deal it is, if you don’t like it then get out!
I work in the Aerospace industry and let me tell you these guys have a sweet deal. Put in your 20, retire out and roll right into a contractor or civilian job making as much or more than he was making as a officer. Also most people don’t realize that with all the housing allowance and other perks that military pay (at least for officers) is pretty damn good. So for them they’ve got that 50% retirement pay plus a good salary as a contractor/civilian.
That's not an absolute. IF there is no base housing THEN they will get the allowances, otherwise, Base pay.
Since you brought it up and it really is a kumquat to the orange...Cops in CA have it very good when it comes to pay, bennies and retirement. Before they even graduate from the CHP Acad., Cadets are making more than many junior to mid-level military officers.
http://www.chp.ca.gov/recruiting/osalary.html
Upon retirement up to 90% of their pay plus disability that is not OFFSET like the military folks who are disabled. You see, as a DV, I get a modest disability check, tax free, yet my retirement pay is reduced by the amount of my disability pay. Not the cops. No way, no how. Their disability pay is in addition to their retirement.
Btw, not ALL military retirees are picked up by the contractors. Gotta have what they want/need. A TS clearance is usually the Golden Ticket in aerospace, but no guarantee if you're not competent, highly skilled or have qualifications/certifications needed. I've seen plenty of damn fine troops get turned down by the contractors and by civil service.
I'm not "bellyaching", I'm pointing out the errors in your comments regarding your limited knowledge of the reality military members and retirees face.
If you have not gotten the message of just how wrong you are you need to read some more posts. Only a fraction of those in service make the grade to 20. The “retirement” has a high PV but like one poster said, industry does not countenance the significant experience these people have and start them at the bottom if at all since the are “too old”. Self employment is about all that is left in many cases. If people in the private sector worked as hard as many of these people do it would take half as many people to do the jobs. Military people who make a 20 year career have earned every bit of the approximately $2.4mm in PV for each $40k/year in retirement.
How many 14 hour days do you work on a regular basis? How many days to you simply not come home? How often do you leave and not know when or if you will come home at all? Not all military members do this but a whole lot do.
Most fighter pilots are a couple of inches shorter when they finish 20 years and are hard of hearing from their “cush” jobs. They have busted backs from compressed vertebra, neck problems or one or more repaired hernia. They have hundreds if not thousands of hours as command pilot in jets that make airliners look like kites and for their vast experience, because the airlines are union and seniority based, immediately get booted to the bottom of the heap if they are hired in the first place.
In the fighter community perfection is only just acceptable. Most of these guys and ladies are in the top 1% of the top 1% in intelligence and physical ability. They are over achievers of the first order and signed up for what they are getting so they did it willingly. They also did it under agreement to terms and conditions that should never be reduced in any way. Doing otherwise makes the whole nation liars.
Cuts need to be made but not here. Go after the public sector GS and WG people first AND go after a whole bunch of other waste. Change the federal budget process that rewards waste by requiring that money be spent or lost. This policy only allows for continual increase in cost... in fact it enforces it. Just stupid.
It is obvious you have no idea what you are talking about.
Boeing in LA, perhaps?
Union, perhaps?
While I was still in, I saw a briefing Gates was given. It was a ‘decision brief’, so at the end it asked Gates to decide which option he wanted to proceed with.
Gates made his decision. Gates then came out in public and blasted the USAF for obeying the decision he had just made!.
That was when I knew he was a conniving, lying political toady. I’ve despised him ever since, and nothing he has done in the remaining years has indicated my judgment of him was wrong!
Wait,, wait, don't tell me!
Bring them all home and convert them into a federal domestic community based police force!
Your numbers seem high. Are they for officers?
As a retired E7, my retirement pay including my disability is ~ $17k before state and federal taxes and the allotment for SBP which will pay my surviving spouse 55% of my retirement pay.
OK. I’ll bite. If Gates isn’t the best in Washington right now, who do you nominate? (Understanding, of course, that I mean the Obama executive branch as “Washington,” not some SC justice or congressman.)
If you were a retired California municipal ditch-digger, you’d get 3X that.
Of course there’s no problem with the Marines having a land mission. That’s PART of their job.
The point is that Marines can and must do it ALL. We’re depending on them to do just that, so rebalancing to strengthen both capabilities is a wise move.
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