Generals immune from COLA cuts to pensions
I know this will surprise you, especially since generals like Ray Odierno and Marty Dempsey have been vociferously supportive of personnel cuts to Pentagon costs, but the Army Times reports that the latest cut to retirees pensions won’t affect general officers;
In 2007, Congress passed a Pentagon-sponsored proposal that boosted retirement benefits for three- and four-star admirals and generals, allowing them to make more in retirement than they did on active duty. The Pentagon had requested the change in 2003 to help retain senior officers as the military was fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and wanted to entice officers to remain on active duty.
That means a four-star officer retiring with 40 years of experience would receive a pension of $237,144, according to the Pentagon. Base pay for active-duty top officers is $181,501, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a Pentagon spokesman. Housing and other allowances can boost their compensation an additional third.
[…]
But the [Congressional budget] deal [which impacts most retirees’ pensions] does not affect the 2007 enhancement for top pension, which has allowed pension rates for those officers to spike. Figures for 2011 show that a four-star officer retiring with 38 years’ experience received a yearly pension of about $219,600, a jump of $84,000, or 63 percent beyond what was previously allowed. A three-star officer with 35 years’ experience would get about $169,200 a year, up about $39,000, or 30 percent. Before the law was changed, the typical pension for a retired four-star officer was $134,400.
Yeah, so, I guess we know why they mind hiking medical costs on the rank-and-file. I probably wouldn’t mind much either if i had a $200k/year pension to fall back upon. Well, until I think about the rank-and-file on a pension less than 10% of my own. Buncha self-serving little pricks, the perfumed princes telling the rest of us to sacrifice for the good of the nation, while they’re laying in their silk robes, their grape-peeler at their feet.
Thanks to ROS for the link.
Category: Big Army
Disgusting, how can this pass the straight face test?
This must be that income inequality the Emperor and his piss boys are raging about lately. Right?
It’s the f-you got mine school of leadership. All the “think tanks” and the pundits full of idiots calling for 90’s and 80’s style wages and bennies all got out or got theirs and are immune. Blue Falcons should be forced to live on the pensions and bennies they advocate.
Nice kick in the nuts there to add insult to injury
What a f@cking surprise! How do these men, mostly, look in the mirror in the morning and then head on over to someplace where they see real live troops EARNING a living. There is no shame anymore. One of the biggest problems and root causes of many of our nation’s issues is…NO SHAME. It is a shame to see that it runs from the welfare class all the way to the Pentagon!
@ 5, Sparks, I think it’s an entitlement mentality. Aggravating, to say the least.
The latest military pension changes (they’re not actual “cuts” – no one will see their gross retired pay go down) won’t affect anyone who retires at age 62 years or older. That’s a small number of folks, but they are indeed mostly senior Generals, a few WOs, some medical personnel, and some Chaplains. Everyone else who retires at less than age 62 will be affected by those changes – even senior generals with enhanced pensions. The reason some senior generals can get a pension larger than 100% of their active duty pay is that actual pay for many generals is limited by law to less than their base pay. Pay for some Federal employees is limited by law. Pay for General Officers is limited by Schedule II of the Executive Schedule. That limit is substantially lower than published pay scales for LTGs/VADMs with over 30 YoS and all GENs/ADMs. The statutory limit apparently doesn’t apply to retired pay. I’d actually like to read the statutory language involved here before I accept all of this article’s claims at face value. The article claims that service academy time counts towards military retirement. Unless the law made an exception targeted at GOs/FOs, time at the Service Academies does NOT count towards either active or reserve retirement. (It can be captured as civilian service credit if someone leaves active duty and later goes to work as a Federal civilian and pays the required deposit – but active-duty military retirees doing so have to pay the deposit for ALL of their military service and count it all as civilian service, and then must also waive military retired pay when they retire as a civilian in order to accept their civilian pension.) Given that apparent error or misstatement, I’d like to fact-check the rest of the article before accepting everything it says at face value. To add a bit of perspective: Federal civilians who retire under the current retirement system (FERS) get NO annual COLA for their pensions until they turn age 62 – none, zip, nada. And when they do reach age 62, the COLA… Read more »
Good thing he came out so strongly against this….no double standard at all.
RE:
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20131017/NEWS/310170025/Commandant-Amos-calls-renewed-focus-discipline
“The Marine Corps’ top officer is calling on the service to renew its focus on discipline and standards amid early signs that 12 years of combat have caused some “fraying” of the service’s values.”
I’m thinking that last paragraph should read “why they DON’T mind hiking” etc.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record…. senior officers get confirmed by politicians, and their values tend to be complementary. Kind of like fellow syphlitic sewer rats.
Whew.
For a minute there I was worried enlisted wouldn’t have enough legit reasons to hate officers more.
Thanks Obama.
Total BS, but unsurprising.
No worries for the senior brass. Retirement is the time to be a walking talking “rolodex”, and cash in as consultants, lobbyists, get on boards of various Fortune 500 corps, and yeah to reward the wife. Those 3 & 4 stars open up alot of doors – these guys ain’t starving.
Hondo – graduates of the service academies can buy back their four years of instruction at the taxpayers expense for the purpose of retirement as a federal civilian employee. It is a great deal (and ripoff) if you can get it. To buy back those four years, one only has to pay under a 1000 dollars. It is so low, because they were only paid a the E-5 rate.
What does that get them? Say they want to get 20 years as a Fed civilian. Well now, they only need 16 more years, not twenty. But here is the kicker. Say they make 100,000 a year. When they retire, they get 20 percent of their 36 month average in addition to whatever they put in their thrift savings. That academy time will now get them an additional 4000 a year for the rest of their life. Not a bad investment for under a 1000 bucks.
And for the record: don’t get the idea I’m a supporter of the latest pension changes. I’m not; they might well delay my own full retirement a year or three.
But I also hate misinformation and slanted stories in the press, even when I agree with the writer’s thesis. The original Army Times story Jonn linked makes a good point: very senior military officers won’t be much affected by the latest pension changes, while almost everyone else will be. But IMO it also shades the facts, leaves out pertinent information, and makes factual errors – possibly intentionally. That type of slanted reporting has always bothered the hell out of me.
Arby: I said that in comment 7 above, amigo.
It’s also a package deal. Unless they’re a military retiree, a person doing that generally has to “buy back” ALL of their military service prior to beginning Federal civilian employment – active duty plus service academy time, if applicable – or none of it. Federal personnel rules in general don’t allow a person to “buy back” one tour of duty but not another. So they’ll generally be ponying up a much larger deposit – if they left service short of retirement, they’ll also need to pony up for the 5 or more years of service on active duty as an O-1/O-2/O-3 after attending one of the academies.
There are one or two exceptions to the above “package deal” principle. An active-duty retiree who later is employed as a Federal civilian might be able to recapture time at a service academy by itself since service academy time is not used in calculating military retired pay (because it’s not counted towards military retirement, I’m pretty sure it thus technically qualifies as a period of “non-deduction federal service” for which a deposit can be made to recoup service). And an individual who buys back military service occurring prior to beginning service as a Federal civilian and who later ends up back on extended active duty (e.g., mobilization) has the option of “buying back” such later tours after each occurs when they return to Federal civilian service. But in all cases, an individual doing that has to come up with cash out of pocket.
@10:
This is actually a law passed during the Bush administration, at the request of Secretary Rumsfeld. The idea was that there was no reward to people who served beyond 30 years, because their retirement pay capped at 75%. So the law was changed to allow you to continue to accrue retirement, up to 100% at 40 years of service. It was in the papers a year or two ago as I recall, and they said at the time that it was an “unintended consequence.” There was some noise about fixing it (like, say, using the capped salary to compute your retirement). Obviously THAT didn’t get anywhere. And the pay cap hits, as I recall, somewhere at about 2 stars, so the higher ranking officers are essentially working at no additional pay. But it does explain why we haven’t heard much noise out of our senior uniformed leaders–like John says, it doesn’t affect most of them, or if it does, it’s at most for a year or two, and they’re taking home more money than they were on active duty, so to them, better to keep quiet than stand up for the rest of the troops. It’s the same, to me, with retiree TRICARE costs. no big deal to them, since they’re making big bucks both in their pension and as “consultants.” Grrr . . .
DonH: actually, the cap starts at LTG/VADM w/>30 YoS and all GEN/ADM. Per DFAS pay tables, all GOs/FOs below LTG/VADM w/30 YoS make less than Level II of the Executive Schedule cap and get full pay.