Posted on 08/17/2011 5:43:05 AM PDT by shortstop
They want to cut military pensions.
The Obama Administration’s panel of smart guys has decided military retirement has to go.
Welfare can stay, free pills for Grama can stay, bogus SSI checks for life can stay, Food Stamps for soda and steak can stay, cushy federal civilian benefits stay, congressional compensation packages remain the same, but pensions for guys on their fourth tour, well, we can’t afford them.
You now what this means?
It means the military is a small and Republican-leaning voting bloc that the Democrats don’t care about alienating. It means that veterans have no political pull – on either the support or the consciences of the politicians.
To balance the budget, in the Obama world, we target millionaires and the military. And not just weapons systems, but the men and women who use them.
We pull the rug out from under them.
We take a low-paying, dangerous, high-stress crap job with a pittance of a pension, and we yank the pension. And by so doing we will reduce spending, over the next 20 years, by less than one-sixth of this year’s Obama budget deficit.
Put another way, over those same 20 years, the savings from nixing military pensions will be about the same as was given to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Citigroup and Bank of America in the bailout. We threw away in a foolish ineffective stimulus enough to pay military pensions for more than a century.
The big banks got theirs, and the soldiers are going to get the shaft.
SSI is a lifelong, guaranteed right, just like Food Stamps and any number of other welfare programs, and those programs absolutely dwarf the money spent on military pensions, but pensions go and welfare stays.
Because welfare recipients vote – if it’s not raining and you give them a ride – and they vote Democrat.
So their money is safe.
While reporters and politicians who’ve never been in the military opine about how we can’t afford military pensions anymore.
Let’s look at those pensions.
Currently, people in the military are allowed to retire after 20 years. They receive, as a pension, half of their base pay.
And what is that base pay?
Well, that depends on their rank, but the overwhelming majority of people in the military are junior enlisted people – low-rank grunts who get paid squat.
Here are some examples. An E-4 – the most common rank in the U.S. military – pays between $1,900 and $2,300 a month, depending on how long a person has been in the service. For those of you without calculators, that works out to between $22,800 and $27,600 a year.
That is less, in terms of spending power, than the money and benefits given to welfare recipients.
And, whereas GIs face the prospect of fighting and dying for our freedom, welfare recipients just sit around on their arses.
The most common retiree rank in the U.S. military is E-7, which has a base monthly pay, after 20 years of service, of $4,189. That’s $50,268 annually, or about what a New York State Trooper makes in his rookie year.
Of course, that same trooper will soon average $101,000 a year – if he never passes the sergeant’s test – and be eligible for 50% retirement after 20 years.
Just like an American combat veteran.
Except that half of $50,268 a year is $25,134.
Twenty-five thousand dollars a year.
In most of America, that’s not a mortgage payment. In most of America, that’s substantially below the welfare payout.
In all of America, that’s dramatically below congressional compensation and pension.
In all of America, that’s a crying, immoral shame.
The military is a lower-middle-class job. It is, financially, targeted at lower-income people, offering them a chance to step, barely, into the middle class, to get some college and maybe buy a house. The military is peopled by folks who, if they were less honorable, could have stayed home and made more money on public assistance.
And the Obama Administration is begrudging them a pittance of a pension.
The Obama Administration wants to push these people into a 401k – how much do people making $25,000 a year have left over to put into their 401k – and have that 401k be off limits to the military retiree until they are 65 or 70.
Apparently, the Obama Administration begrudges GIs their 20-year retirement. So let’s take up that issue. Why can people in the military retire after just 20 years of service?
Actually, the only people who ask that question are people who’ve never been in the military.
The military is the hardest, most dangerous and personally draining job our society has. It destroys families, it takes lives, it grinds down souls. It is very hard to be in the military. You are treated like crap, and your life is not your own. You do very difficult and dangerous things. Some sail off in ships for six months at a time, some are sent to war zones for a year at a time, all must uproot their lives and their families every two or three years to move off and start over at some far-distant post.
And some of them come home in a box, or with a hook where their hand used to be and a plate where their skull used to be.
And it is a young man’s game. Yes, older people serve, and some stay far more than 20 years. But the overwhelming majority of men and women in the service are young people whose duty is literally pounding the life and youth out of them. They give the best years of their lives and after 20 years many of them simply don’t have anything left anymore.
Cops all across America retire after 20, with better pay and retirement than servicemen, and they face less-stressful jobs.
How is that fair?
And how is it fair that an administration that was pushed into power with union money is targeting its largest non-union workforce for a benefits cut? Does anyone think for half a moment that the Democrat-affiliated, union-represented federal workforce would face similar unilateral cuts?
Absolutely not.
But there will be no negotiations, no asking of the troops, there will simply be a plundering, a breaking of promises, a deserting of our national honor.
And a repudiation of a sentiment of obligation felt since the disbanding of the Continental army and best expressed in Lincoln’s Second Inaugural:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan -- to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”
To care for him who shall have borne the battle.
That started with Washington and will end with Obama.
If we are silent in the face of this outrage.
We have a massive, bloated, entitlement government. It is ripe for the cutting. And we are offered the veteran’s head on a platter. Let us refuse it. And let us turn our ire on those who take, but have given nothing. Veterans have earned their pension, let us pay them before we pay those who are “entitled” to welfare.
The most bloated pension plans are the president, Congress, and top-ranking federal employees. Let’s see Congress and the president take their cuts first.
Except for Obamacare, social handout programs and government jobs.
They want a DRAFT. This is the back door way to acquire a “need” for one....
What happens when you can't raise taxes high enough to pay this deferred pay? At some point every tax dollar raised begins to impact the economy negatively which in turn leads to higher unemployment, lower growth and less tax receipts.
This is COMPENSATION, deferred pay, and it shouldn't be lessened a single penny by market forces.
Market forces have a way of making changes occur even though we don't want them to. Obviously our military is special in that so much is asked of them in defense of our country, but look at GM and what happened to them with their pensions.
Any plan must include the government GUARANTEEING a certain payment per month despite the size of any 401k.
You know how govt gets around this? They monetize the debt. They print more and more money until the value goes down and pay back the obligation with money that is worth half of what it used to be.
I don’t think that wealthy and connected young veterans are flocking to the Criminal Justice discipline here.
Benefits accruing to those who do not take a military career path are huge already, Wm. They have educational benefits that enable them to go to any school, to have the tuition/books/supplies paid for, and to have a stipend above that. They have a loan guarantee for buying a home that equals the value of mortgage insurance, potentially thousands of dollars, they have access to countless veteran's benefits, to include life health care at a VA facility.
What the military needs is to raise up leaders: experienced NCOs, warrants, and officers who will lead and train based on their experience.
The deferred compensation coming to those with 20+ years of service guarantees those leaders will stay.
Incidentally, the military member ALREADY can invest in a 401k type program called the "Thrift Savings Plan." Isn't Obama cute....offering the troops something they already have.
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/benefits/a/tsp.htm"As of this year, military members are unlimited in the amount they can contribute to TSP. When the program was first made available to servicemembers in 2000, they could only contribute up to 5 percent of their income. Now the only limit is the Internal Revenue Service’s $15,000 per-year limit on contributions to tax-deferred accounts.
Deployed troops have different limits in TSP. Because their income is tax-exempt and the IRS has a separate limit for that category, they can contribute up to $44,000 per year, according to Johnson.
Before I repost this to my battle-cry FB page,
where is the source of this info before
Bob got it?
It may be I just can’t find in the article
or on Bob’s blog.
I need to verify, please. Thanks!
Screwing troops out of their promised pensions will also reduce the number of enlistments, which will save more money!
Think of all of the troops that won't enlist and all of that equipment that Holder's organization can give to the Mexican drug cartels!
I see a "Hero of the Soviet Union" and another Peace Prize heading for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue!
My husband, a retired E-7, gets less than $1,400 a month for his pension. That isn't enough to live on.
I really hope this idea is tabled. There may be an ulterior motive here; without the pension, people won't choose a military career. And if people don't choose a military career, the Democrats then can enact their decades-long dream of reinstating the draft.
“Military pension is not a “benefit”. It is deferred pay.”
Excellent post. I had never thought of it that way, but that really is the way to look at it.
Absolutely! Eliminate all publically funded pensions for elected offices and politically appointed positions. Then cut the perqs
They want to cut military pensions............................................... “THEY” do? Who are the “THEYs”? I want their names. Don’t stir up the pot without the names.
The above comment just destroyed any argument anyone has for not retaining the current pension.
The military pension is NOT about government ability to pay entitlement welfare kings and queens. To group our military into that same passel of deadbeats is to intentionally ignore that they have EARNED their compensation for services rendered.
Those who would take their pension are advocating stealing their pay.
In the recent debt ceiling debate, it was revealed that the government is already taking in more than enough money to pay all military and veteran obligations PLUS debt service, defense, federal pay, social security, medicare, medicaid, and have significant amounts remaining.
Let them divide that remainder between the departments, and if necessary, it's too easy to rid ourselves of the useless dept of education, all duplicate missions, all waste/fraud/abuse, the EPA, etc, etc.
Actually it is not so liberating. It is a deferred income program and while the money is technically yours, your ability to invest as you please is severely limited. Additionally since it is a creature of statute, the government could conceivably confiscate your entire 401k assets and trade them for treasury certificates and force everyone who owns one to buy the debt of the US Government as their retirement.
Frankly I expect the government to do just that at some point in the near future. Especially if Obama is re-elected.
I don’t know the exact numbers, but, the power of compound interest is a mighty thing...
That is a used to be. Now that the Fed is loaning out our hard earned money so they and perhaps the government earn interest, those left can continue to get used to zero times zero, equals zero. The Fed’s low interest rate is helping them, but not the public.
...or in the case of equities, a large decrease in your principle every two to five years, isn’t much help when you are attempting to grow a 401K. Government distortion of what made America great in the past is looking pretty shaky in the future.
Yeah; that's SOP for politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Thanks, ngat, for your insight and support of our brave warriors.
What do we owe a guy who had to watch his buddy get burned to a crisp, who had to risk his life crawling through the window of a building...not knowing if that was the final act of his life.
These civilian lounge chair jockeys simply don’t comprehend the price that has been paid.
Do they want a clue? Read Jeff Shaara’s account of the Marines taking Sugar Loaf Hill on Okinawa in his “The Final Storm”
Having a benefit package that can't be arbitrarily reduced by the govt would add to that.
Incidentally, the military member ALREADY can invest in a 401k type program called the "Thrift Savings Plan."
In this program does the govt match, or exceed, the contribution made by the individual?
The problem is as people live longer and the number of people in tax paying age groups are getting smaller (we are getting older as a nation) the money is not there.
This idea better be a non starter.
First of all, those who will be hurt the most will be the lower graded enlisted....they don’t have the spare funds to put into a matching program.
On the civilian side, this has been in operation for some time, 86 I believe. By the time the late 90s rolled around, some in Congress were so concerned that some who had put their money in stocks had amassed huge 403 money, they wanted to remove the government matching program...
This is the worse idea I have ever seen put forth by this morally and ethically void government.
What happens when the money to pay for it is gone?
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