Hunter: We must slash compensation for military
Chock Block sends us a link from Breaking Defense which reports that Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, probably the most stalwart defender of the troops, wants to slash future compensation of military members who haven’t joined yet;
Career soldiers can retire at 42, get a great deal on Tricare health insurance, take home a pension, and get paid a good private-sector salary on top of that. That can’t continue to be the norm for the military and Congress must create a two-tier pay system, says Rep. Duncan Hunter, Marine Corps reservist and member of the House Armed Services Committee.
“It’s time for Congress to look at this,” Hunter said at the inaugural Defense One conference. The message must be sent that, “If you join tomorrow things are going to be different.”
Hunter was careful to argue that those currently in the military should still get the benefits promised them, but the next group must receive reduced benefits, because growing compensation costs will eat up a majority of the defense budget should they go unchecked. If a servicemember retires and gets a good private sector job — say as a defense contractor — then they don’t need Tricare, Hunter said: “You should have to buy into [private] healthcare and stop being subsidized by the American taxpayer.”
I hope you millionaire retirees are happy that you’re responsible for busting the budget. While I appreciate much of what Hunter has done for the military members over the years, I don’t see him recommending cutting the compensation for retired members of Congress or suggesting that their healthcare “stop being subsidized by the American taxpayer”. Reducing the compensation of servicemembers will only affect retention as evidenced among our comments when these stories roll in and the military will begin to bleed experience.
Category: Congress sucks
Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter is an assmonkey for even suggesting this… I have yet to hear of any serious cuts to entitlement programs such as welfare, or even attempt to look into even auditing those programs to find the waste and abuse and eliminate it.
nope, we will just continue to hack away at our National Defense while our adversaries strengthen theirs… Cannot simply blame Obama for this alone.
Sounds like somebody else has been hitting the crack pipe.
All is part of the plan to return to the 90’s:
Air Force (and soon the Navy) will have trouble keeping pilots and planes aloft, no money for parts, pilots don’t want to stay in.
Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen on food stamps or leaving because pay and bennies are cut.
A massive draw down that’s already leading calls for a draft to keep the numbers up.
Jonn: I hope you realize that the current Rep. Duncan D. Hunter is the son of the long-time military-supporting Rep. Duncan L. Hunter. Rep. Hunter the father retired in 2009, and the current Rep. Hunter the son was promptly elected to his father’s seat.
Any nepotism wonderful??
Siggurdsson #4, yes, I knew that. Hunter, the senior was Army and his son is a Marine.
I was in the Navy in the late 70’s, when pay was not keeping up with the high inflation of the time, and consequently was pretty abysmal. Before setting up a lower pay scale, Congress might want to talk to those who served at that time and see how it worked. And, yes, anyone who thinks Congress will do that is on high-potency medications…..
George V.
Deja-vu all over again. What’s next? Make the troops pay for their own deployment expenses? Yeah, I concocted that about a week ago.
I guess it never occurred to these guys that some of us actually LIKE the military healthcare system. I know I do, and spent almost 30 years as a small part of it. Scrap some procurement programs they’re running for systems that can’t perform as advertised –couch-cough-F-35-cough-cough–and they’ll have plenty of funds available to pay troops. But tehn, troops don’t get lucrative defense contracts sent to your district, do they?
I’m surprised to hear this from Hunter, as he’s always been a staunch supporter of the military. I don’t understand why everyone is all up in arms about personnel costs eating up 50 percent of the defense budget. That’s generally THE NORM. It’s not out of the ordinary, especially not for a military our size. NATO benchmark for defense spending breakdowns includes at least 20 percent of the budget spent on procurement and no more than 50 percent of the budget spent on personnel, as well as a defense burden of at least 2 percent of GDP. This is nothing new.
The problem with cutting entitlements is that they’re not discretionary spending. In order to cut entitlements, we literally have to change the law, and since we have a Congress that can’t even pass a budget, the chance of passing entitlement reforms is slim to none. As far as discretionary spending goes, we can only cut so much, so we’re never going to see actual budget reform until we see entitlement reform. And good luck getting THAT through Congress!
But… but… but Don (@8)! We can’t cut unnecessary procurement! That *insert weapons system here* is being produced in *insert name of congresswine here*’s district, and they might not get reelected if said procurement project is scrapped! Think of the Congressleech, why dontcha!
/sarc
Its likely to hurt recruitment as well. The reasons anyone enlists are many and tailored to each individual. But, retirement at 20, health insurance and educational benefits usually play into it. If we turn military service into just another job, why not go get one that pays?
That is a great idea. Take away incentive from the all VOLUNTEER military. That is going to boost the hell out of the recruiting effort!! “Well Johnny, your pay and benefits are going to suck, but if you enlist I can guarantee you will go get shot at!!” Oh hell yeah, where do I sign!!!
Here is another great idea. Lets all just get in a big circle, sing hippie love songs and hope that the bad guys don’t come and rough us up.
What the fuck are these politicians smoking?
Pay is already shitty enough.
“I don’t see him recommending cutting the compensation for retired members of Congress….” No shit. They ain’t gonna give these goodies back:
“Retirement with an immediate, full pension is available to Members aged 60 or older with 10 years of service in Congress, or aged 62 with five years of civilian federal service, including service in Congress.”
“As of October 1, 2012, 527 retired Members of Congress were receiving federal pensions based fully or in part on their congressional service. Of this number, 312 had retired under CSRS [Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund] and were receiving an average annual pension of $71,472. A total of 215 Members had retired with service under FERS and were receiving an average annual pension of $40,560 in 2012.”
http://www.senate.gov/CRSReports/crs-publish.cfm?pid='0E%2C*PLC8%22%40%20%20
The problem here is that DoD has backed itself into a corner here through past successes. And, frankly, I don’t see a particularly good way out.
We’ve sold the US public on being able to defeat any and all opponents with a highly-trained, professional, qualitatively-superior military. We’ve essentially pulled that off ever since Vietnam ended. And by historical standards, we’ve done it with exceptionally few casualties (just take a look at the casualty figures for World War II, Korea, and Vietnam if you doubt the last).
The public now expects this. I hate to be the skunk at the garden party – but that ain’t gonna continue forever. We ain’t got the cash.
Why? Doing so is based on two key factors: (a) weapons systems that are substantially better than those possessed by adversaries, and (b) troops that are better trained and more capable than our adversaries. The former means expensive weapons systems; the latter costs mucho dinero for training and pay.
Uncle Sam is flat on his ass broke (though we have yet to face that fact). As Nicki has observed, we’re not cutting entitlement programs. I’ll give you three guesses as to what that means for DoD.
There are ways out of this dilemma, but they’re not ones anyone wants to hear. And I suspect we won’t adopt any of them until forced by events.
Hondo, how much of the actual cost of the military comes from civilian contractors doing jobs that could just as easily be handled by military personnel?
I’m not talking about building ships or airplanes, but rather about logistics and supplies.
I’m referencing a contractor in the South who has just acquired a $5.5 billion (yes BILLION) contract as a supplier, as well as the news about the man who goes by the name Fat Leonard, who is at the root of that recent scandal about a Navy officer and bribes for directing Navy ships to his ports, which are all over the place.
2/17 Air Cav: all current Congressional pensions total a bit over $31M annually; Uncle Sam is spending over $4T annually. That means Congressional pensions constitute less than 0.0008% of Federal outlays.
Hell, I’d guess there’s at least that much outright fraud in the SNAP program in NY state alone – and maybe in NYC by itself.
For what it’s worth: CSRS has been closed to new Federal employees, including Congress, since Jan 1983. The only exceptions are those with a minimum of 5 years civilian Federal employment prior to January 1983 who left the Federal workforce and who were later elected to Congress. So while a few “old timers” in Congress may still qualify for a CSRS pension when they retire, most won’t. The FERS pension is substantially less generous, so costs will go down in the future.
The current Congressional Salary is $174,000. That means the average FERS Congressional pension is 23% of salary for an average of a bit less than 16 years of service – for a group with average ages in their 70s. For CSRS, it’s an average of 41% of salary for a bit over 21 years of service – again, for a group with an average ages in their 70s.
Cutting Congressional pensions is a great “sound bite”. However, doing so would have essentially zero impact on the Federal budget. And I’m pretty sure doing so retroactively has some serious problems, legally speaking.
What a f%*&#@g hypocrite. I would expect this from a liberal politician, but this from a republican just made my entire day.
Rep. Duncan, how about you start with your own group first asshole.
@17. Hondo. The point is not the total cost of Congressional benefits, retirement or otherwise. My point is in response to Jonn’s comment, which I quoted, and with which I agree. If sacrifice and reduced compensation is being demanded or suggested for our military, let the sacrifice and reduced compensation begin with the decisions makers, at least. Perhaps I should point out that I am not directly affected by DoD cuts of any sort.
I think the taxpayer subsidized healthcare cuts should START with Congress!
I get the feeling Hunter has already suggested cutting Congressional pension benefits, but nobody’s heard about it.
The minute your favorite dog attacks your livestock, you “fire” that dog, and get another one.
With the dog, you use a gun; with the poltician, you use a ballot.
2/17 Air Cav: if your intent was to advocate reducing future Congressional pensions, frankly that didn’t come across. The comment seemed to be advocating reducing pensions of those already retired from Congress. That would be akin to advocating reducing pensions of those who have already retired from the military. Pretty big difference, I think – and as far as I know, that has NOT been suggested.
The proposals to date, as I read them, grandfather current troops (or at least those with more than X years service). That’s pretty much the way the last several Federal military and civilian pension changes have been handled – existing employees grandfathered under the “old” rules, but new hires on/after the effective date fall under the “new” rules.
Coverage under CHAMPUS/TRICARE has always been a different issue, as both CHAMPUS and TRICARE have always had a potential or actual cost share/fee for retirees. Changes there are painful, but are changes in scope vice an outright reduction.
Yeah, it sucks. But the reality is that Uncle Sam is fast approaching flat broke, and everyone’s gonna be sucking hind t!t pretty soon.
Maybe if we were not trying to alter the entire economy through a forced taxation of insurance income would be more appropriate to promises made to troops.
Labor is a substantial cost of any business where the personnel have to be better educated with more technical skill than the average Detroit Public Education victims….
Equipment operators running highly technical trade equipment in the private sector routinely make north of $25 an hour with employer supplied benefits, CAD Machinists can make 6 figures, and Caterpillar has a boatload of open blue collar jobs in the 80-90k range. Hell, I pay guys $50k or more to run printing presses or operate the computer systems in pre-press (where they sit at a desk most days and don’t engage in anything more dangerous than risking a paper cut)….if the military is expecting someone to get killed for minimum wage and sh1tty benefits it won’t exactly be creating a big draw for a properly qualified personnel pool.
Must be nice to be in the government management sector and get a fat salary for being a dumb4ss and have no f@cking clue how things operate every where else in the nation….anybody thinking reducing wages and benefits is a draw for the best and brightest is obviously not too f@cking bright themselves…
You all should look at the report. In addition to the proposed lower raises and increased costs for TRICARE, they also recommend stopping concurrent receipt of retired pay and VA disibility pay, increasing minimum out-of-pocket costs for TRICARE for Life, recalculating how they compute inflation, thus limiting cost of living increases, changing the rules for VA disability payments by limiting what is defined as “line of duty,” stopping VA medical care for groups 7 and 8, and so on. And that’s not even looking at the stuff that would have an effect on everybody, regardless of their former military status. It is an ugly report.
Has even a single politician proposed cracking down on welfare, Medicare, Medicaid, or 0bamacare fraud? I’m SO sick and tired of seeing these DC insiders on their “Fuck the Vets” campaigns!! Just WTF was going through that candyassed perfumed prince’s head when he proposed that, is he trying to be the next John Kerry?
@26: Of course not, that would be political suicide. People on those programs outnumber us 100 to 1, so it does less damage to go after us.
My mother worked for the father when she was 16. She actually babysitted the current Congressman Hunter for a time. She remembered from working in the office that he was an alright guy, but he had a penchant for using taxpayer provided benefits in a way that unquestionably benefited nobody but him. One time, he went hunting with bunch of lobbyists and bagged a moose, then promptly threw his entire taxpayer-provided staff into panic for hours trying to find a freezer for the damn thing. He did a lot of stuff like that. Probably wasn’t any worse than any other Congressman in DC, though. Definitely, this is way out of line, though. “Career soldiers can retire at 42 with pensions”-yeah, so after 20 years of service being shot at, forced to obey others’ commands with complete obedience, and going through physical training that wears the body down to splinters (Terminal lance has done some great satires of this), soldiers retiring at 37 with 35k a year pensions is the main driver behind the deficit. Good lord, wonder how so many idiots get into Congress.
@23. Yeah, whatever.
Post number 25 was mine. I guess my cookies got cleaned out this morning or something.
@26: Remember it’s not just the veterans, they’re putting the screws to the Federal civilian workforce, too. And the Chief of Staff of the Army proposed stopping retired military from earning a Federal civilian pension. Which I’m sure will drive up contractor costs, just like it did when they tried that in the past.
Agree with Hondo on this, with the caveat that there are many areas where the DOD budget can use some fiscal stewardship. Weapon systems no one wants but congress critters are a good start.
I’d like to point out that up until the draft was eliminated, military service was simply looked at by most people as a requirement that you fulfilled and not as a career per se.
It was not until it became an all-volunteer force that someone decided to turn it into a long-term career choice with pay and benefits that reflected the civilian workforce.
This whole thing is nonsense if we are to continue to have an all-volunteer military. Either it’s a career field and should reflect that with pay and benefits, or it’s a 6-year stint to get work experience with a possible career, should one choose to go there. If it goes back to being a 6-year stint, that means reviving the draft, including women in that and a better process of selecting people for senior positions.
There are people like (gag!) Manning who made it clear he only wanted money for college and had no interest in a career. He should never have been hired in the first place, but if the draft had still been in place, he’d have been required to put in some AD time, regardless.
And then there are people like MCPO NYC Ret who decided to make a career out of it, once they were in it.
So which would you rather have?
Hondo – let me see, Reagan essentially forced the USSR to spend ‘way too much money (in their case on their military) they wound up broke therefrom, and ended up circling the drain. We, on the other hand, took a quarter century longer to do pretty much the same damn thing – the obvious conclusion is that spending money on welfare queens is a slower death than spending on a giant inefficient military.
The rules governing my retirement changed just before I enlisted in 1985. The rules changed periodically throughout my service. As it stands, I don’t collect a dime until I turn age 60, so I’m all about Regulars having to wait until they reach age 60.
I really wonder how many service members retire at 37, sit back and enjoy the life of Reilly with so called superb health care until their golden years? Though it’s a good deal, its not anything that can support a growing family with ( I retired when my kids were 9 and 7) especially if you live in an area with a higher cost of living.
If you really want to do something crack down on Social Security Disabilty fraud. That shit is probally 20 times the cost of what you pay out in EARNED benefits to military retirees.
You get what you pay for. No different than I’ve seen in the civilian world. There will always be a percentage of studs there because they want to be, regardless of benefits; but there is also a percentage of slugs and average guys. The more you cut, the greater the percentage of stud and good guys that walk, leaving boat spaces for the slugs. We’ve seen it before several times in our history, and no doubt we’ll see it again. Yet another example of the current occupants of DC (legislature and white house) being the short sighted politically expedient ungrateful assholes we all know them to be.
Oh, come on! Can’t you guys figure out what they really want to do?
They don’t really want a standing army/military force. They’d rather just hire civilian contractors, i.e., mercenaries, to do the job, just like the Colonial Army did when they hired Hessian mercenaries to fight the in American War of Independence.
Now why would they do that? Because hiring mercs when you need them is so much cheaper than maintaining a standing force that appears to be idle during peacetime (even if that is not true). The mercs only get paid when they’re needed, whereas the permanent standing military requires a continuous outlay of cash.
Think about it for a second. I’ve heard of dumber things than this, and I made up this idea out of whole cloth for a story. You wait and see. That will come up in discussion before too long.
This is what I keep telling you! The republicans say thanks for your service because that doesn’t cost them money as raising your benefits, pay and giving you health care! They are always trying to cut your benefits to give the money that you should get to their rich friends! Democrats know you hate them and are always trying to buy your love with increased benefits and health care they would rather spend money on you then greedy rich defense contractors!
We should be looking at how we retain these seasoned, experienced, and well trained soldiers when they hit the 20+ year mark. Sadly as much as we love serving and hate abandoning our comrades in arms, in the end we have families to feed, ex wives to pay, etc…
At 20 years a career soldier is faced with a 50% reduction in basic pay if he continues to serve. Doesnt make much sense financially for him to stay. After the military has spent 100’s of thousands training these guys, they make little effort to try and retain them past the 20 year mark.
I retired at 39 y/o old with 20 years of service. I would have loved to stay, but financially I just couldnt. The Army had spent tons of money training me and my 20 years of experience would not easily be replaced.
I started working for a govt contractor the same day I outprocessed the Army, earning triple my salary and collecting my Army pension.
Why dont we create a system that allows a soldier with 20+ years to transition automatically into other branches of the Federal government and continue to acrue time until he hits 62 y/o.
@37: PH2, I’m quite surprised at you for that one. The Hessians fought for the Crown, not the new U.S.
That said, I agree with your point. Have no doubt, the same suspects from the Bush-43 administration that fuelled the rise of the U.S.-based private military contractors are still pulling the strings for this one, assisted by useful idiots like Duncan Jr. with R’s in front of their names.