The “Gang of Six” is coming for defense money – and retirees
Yeah, that plan that the “Gang of Six” (or Seven) Senators who are proposing an alternate to the spending bill which passed the House yesterday are relying heavily on cuts to Defense and restructuring payments to military and Social Security retirees. in the National Journal is a report that Buck McKeon, Chairman of the House Armed Service Committee isn’t very happy with their proposals;
Seizing on an analysis of the bipartisan Senate group’s plan released on Tuesday by the House Budget Committee, McKeon said the proposal would cut $886 billion in security spending over the next 10 years.
A summary of the gang’s proposal circulated on Tuesday contained little detail on defense or other security cuts. But the gang has said its plan is consistent with suggestions made by the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission, which recommended trimming security accounts by $886 billion over the next decade.
Defense is easy to cut, it takes no real skill to cut the pay, benefits and war fighting material for a minority of Americans, as opposed to slashing eligibility for SSI or welfare…or slashing operations costs for Congress.
And they’re coming for your retirement checks, both military and Social Security;
In his memo, McKeon said the proposal would require changes to military retirement and other benefits – a difficult issue on Capitol Hill, where many lawmakers are reluctant to scale back compensation and benefits for current and retired service personnel.
“It is our belief that this proposal raises serious implications for defense and would not allow us to perform our constitutional responsibility to provide for the safety and security of our country or keep faith with men and women in uniform,” McKeon wrote.
And in the Marine Corps Times, they report that that the Cost-of-Living-Allowance (COLA) that you haven’t got the last two years, well, it’s been too much, so the Gang of Six (or Seven) wants to cut that, too;
A bipartisan group of a half-dozen senators Tuesday presented a deficit-reduction proposal that would mean smaller annual cost-of-living adjustments for federal and military retirees.
The so-called Gang of Six said the government should switch to the so-called chained Consumer Price Index to set all inflationary adjustments, including COLAs, for federal and military pensions and Social Security payments.
I suppose it’s because we’ve always just sat back and taken it in the ass whenever they want to save money on the political cheap. It’s never cost them anything, so why not take a whack at the old fucks again – those of us who’ve already paid off our part of the contract.
Category: Congress sucks, Veteran Health Care, Veterans Issues
What do they want from us now? A kidney? For crying out loud.
The chained CPI is based on the premise that if prices go up, we buy cheaper alternatives. No, really, that’s the brilliant argument these dunces use to justify this. Given this logic, one can only speculate that, if inflation goes high enough, we’d get a negative COLA.
I am surprised they stop at this. I was expecting them to try to resurrect their cockamamie scheme to dump all future active duty people into something like the sorry ass retirement plan the Reservists get.
McKeon’s not putting forward the whole truth: by omitting the timeline, monies, sources of the monies, management (regulation and application via judicial fiat), and that most of this will likely take place further in the future than we care to admit – McKeon’s just doing a dog-whistle to apply pressure in the budget debate.
More than likely, the timeline for any retirement changes will affect today’s prospects, recruits, and perhaps those on their first hitch. That’s 20+ years from now, during which time it will change again.
#3 I suspect CPI changes would go into effect the next fiscal year after this Gang of Six abortion is passed, which it won’t be, since it is D.O.A. in the House.
The quote $886 Billion is very close to Kent Conrad’s original proposal and it still comes in at a $3 for $1 cut from defense, as opposed to the rest of the entire federal budget.
Meanwhile, they did manage to get through Congress a program that allows their staffers, pages and others to get off the hook for their student loans. How nice of them.
And, the 48% who pay no taxes will not have to step up. SS is no longer the untouchable program to the feds, the folks who don’t pay anything are.
#s 4 & 5: there’s one thing common to each of these money debates: no one can say how they got their numbers.
For example, say I’m the SecDef: I cancel the next nuclear carrier, a submarine, and an airplane. I’ve now saved $800bn (cost of ownership for these systems combined), and nothing else really happens. Grand total gold saved: $0. Grand total gold spent: $0. Like Obamacare, this budget debate is an exercise in gullibility.
Until we have a coherent National Military Strategy, free of PC, we do not have a baseline from which to determine what we need to have. Until we know what we need to have, we don’t know how much money we trully need to spend (in each 2-year cycle) until we’ve achieved what we need.
So: McKeon’s and the rest are fighting on quicksand, and hoping the veterans get riled enough to vote in November 2012.
Nothing the elected idiots do shocks me anymore.. Why don’t they get it? We owe our Nation to those who have Severed and those who are currently doing so. To cut funds from any part of defense is a slap in the face to our Nation. If you all got rich while serving, then maybe I can understand a cut here and there to pay. However I have yet to meet a person who got rich on active duty. I live in the the D.C. Metro area so there are plenty of bases, school’s and HQ personal that I know.
Our retirement is a contractual obligation so when they fuck with it, we need to file a class action lawsuit against the government for fraud, or whatever else we can make work. And name every single congress asshole that votes for it as a respondent.
The one thing expressly stated as a function of the federal government, defense, and these asshats always put defense spending on the chopping block first. We spend billions of dollars on useless programs, like researching the viscosity of various brands of ketchup. But if the military needs new combat aircraft, which they desperately do, well to effin bad!
How much of this are the american people going to take? We killed a whole lot of British and a entire race of native americans just to get away from taxation without representation. Now we have bad representation which btw is more dangerous than no representation. Its time to do away with congress and go to a direct democracy where everyone votes on all the major issues. Like gerald celente says if you can bank online you can vote online. They dont represent you they represent big companies.