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BlackRock, Obama Campaign Donors Stand To Benefit From Cuts To Military Pensions By Matthew Cunningham-Cook Obama U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the Catholic Health Association conference in Washington June 9, 2015. Executives at the financial firm BlackRock helped support both of his election campaigns. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Obama U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the Catholic Health Association conference in Washington June 9, 2015. Executives at the financial firm BlackRock helped support both of his election campaigns. Reuters/Jonathan Ernst Obama U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks at the Catholic Health Association conference in Washington June 9, 2015. Executives...

The U.S. Army is planning to cut more than 40,000 troops over the next two years, a senior U.S. defense official confirmed to Fox News Tuesday. General Martin Dempsey announced at a Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing Tuesday that dwindling resources was a major factor in the decision to cut the number of active troops from 490,000 to 450,000. In addition to the troop cuts, 17,000 Army civilian employees will be laid off in a plan that is to be formally announced on Thursday.

Defence experts said it is 'hugely embarassing' that defence cuts mean Britain can no longer patrol its own waters Britain called in Nato sea patrol planes to hunt for a suspected Russian submarine off Scotland last month, after the Government scrapped its own similar aircraft in defence cuts, it has been disclosed. Maritime patrol aircraft from France, America and Canada flew to Scotland to join Royal Navy warships hunting for the suspected submarine after it was spotted at sea, west of Scotland. At the height of the hunt in late November and first days of December, four allied patrol planes...

Despite all talks of austerity, £1,521.2 billion was the UK’s public debt at the end of the financial year 2013/14, as much as – be prepared for this, but probably you already are - 87.8% of GDP. The Office for National Statistics, the source of these data, in a recent release also informs that this debt represented an increase of £100.6 billion compared to the end of 2012/13. Still according to the ONS, government borrowing, excluding the effects of bank bail-outs, was £11.8 billion in September 2014, £1.6 billion higher than September 2013. Without all their many zeros, these...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Army warned on Monday that mandatory budget cuts due to resume in fiscal 2016 would be devastating to a service that is already facing huge risks as it tries to keep forces ready for battle, replace aging equipment and respond to crises around the world. “We have to have a national security debate … because there is too much going on,” U.S. Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odierno told reporters at the annual Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) conference. Odierno said the Army had agreed to further reduce the size of its active...

In recent years, ground warfare has again gotten a bad name in the United States. This is understandable. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been very costly in lives, treasure, and enduring injury ...to American troopers and their families. The outcomes have been mediocre... ... A recent Chief of Naval Operations wrote a paper last year calling for an active-duty Army only half the size of its recent wartime peak. Ongoing budget pressures, with the pending return of sequestration in 2016, have many defense planners wondering if the Army can in effect become the bill payer for the modernization...

A retired Army sergeant first class living in Northeast El Paso, Texas, says he and his wife will stop shopping on Fort Bliss if the Department of Defense allows commissary prices to climb, as planned, to within 10 percent of local grocers. “I am not the only one here who thinks the same way,” said Louis Lindemann. “By the time we pay for gas alone, we could go to the local Albertson’s or the Walmart food store around the corner. The commissary already has a number of items we can purchase cheaper on the economy.” His email arrived moments after...

The Obama administration on Monday canceled planned cuts to Medicare Advantage amid a drumbeat of election-year opposition from Democrats. The cuts would have reduced the benefits that seniors receive from insurance plans in the program, which offers an alternative to traditional Medicare. The reversal came as a relief to many Democrats, who feared the cuts would create a backlash among seniors in the midterm elections. “In many parts of the country, including New York, Medicare Advantage works very well. They’ve shouldered their share already and this proposed cut would have been disproportionate, hurting seniors who would lose doctors or pay...

LONDON — President Obama spent Wednesday in Brussels talking up the importance of the security relationship between Europe and the United States, but it is considered unlikely that Russia’s seizure of Crimea will prompt increased European military spending at a time of economic anemia and budget cuts. NATO and the European Union regard the Russian move in Ukraine as a wake-up call, a reminder that hard power can easily trump 21st-century assumptions about Europe as a sphere of trade, international law and cooperation. Despite the newly militant tone, NATO members will continue to spend paltry amounts on defense, experts say....

FORT HUACHUCA — A reduction of 2,700 positions on this southern Arizona Army post is possible in the next five years, as the Army looks at a proposed end-strength of 420,000 soldiers, the post’s senior commander told the Herald/Review Wednesday. But before the Army makes any decisions impacting the fort, and other of its installations, there will be a Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA), allowing area community and business leaders, and the general public, to comment on on any environmental or socio-economic impacts such a reduction will have, Maj. Gen. Robert P. Ashley said. “For Fort Huachuca the planning (reduction) numbers...

The health insurance industry fighting proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage payments argued they will raise seniors' out-of-pocket costs next year. America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), a trade group, blasted the reductions with a report Thursday finding that beneficiaries could pay as much as $900 more in 2015 if the cuts take effect. The report by consulting firm Oliver Wyman concluded that Medicare Advantage (MA) plans could see a 5.9 percent total cut to their payments next year as a result of changes proposed by federal health officials. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) floated a 2015 cut of...

GOP lawmakers say the Obama administration is ignoring history in planning a defense budget that bets there won't be another protracted ground war in the near future. The White House is expected to unveil the 2015 defense budget on Tuesday that would cut the active duty Army by more than 20 percent over the next five years. “After Iraq and Afghanistan, we are no longer sizing the military to conduct long and large stability operations,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said last Monday as he previewed the president’s 2015 defense budget. Republicans say this move is foolish, given the effects of...

We don’t usually flak for The Washington Post, but every so often the Washington elite’s liberal “paper of record” gets something right, or at least asks the right question. Such was the case on Monday, February 24, when the Post published an opinion piece by Richard Cohen entitled “Susan Rice and the retreat of American power,” that detailed a bill of particulars against President Obama’s national security advisor, Susan Rice, and the President himself, for the treasonous squandering of American lives, treasure and influence in the world’s affairs. While what happened at Benghazi, Libya and how the events there led...

According to news reports, the US military will be cut dramatically: "Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has proposed shrinking the Army to its smallest size in 74 years through a series of base closures and troops cuts, and by completely eliminating several Air Force aircraft fleets. The move comes as the U.S. Army moves into the final phases of a massive troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, and Congress raises new red flags about American deficit spending. Hagel surprised some observers on Monday when he outlined a global military philosophy that removed America from the center of its universe. [SNIP] I oppose these...

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001. The proposal, described by several Pentagon officials on the condition of anonymity in advance of its release on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged...

2014 January Job Cut Report: Planned Cuts Surge 50 Percent After falling to a 13-year low in December, monthly job cuts surged nearly 50 percent to kick off 2014, as U.S.-based employers announced plans to reduce their payrolls by 45,107 in January, according to the latest report on monthly job cuts released Thursday by global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. The 45,107 job cuts last month were 47 percent higher than a December total of 30,623, which was the lowest one-month total since 17,241 planned layoffs were announced in June 2000. January job cuts were up 12 percent...

LINCOLN — Gov. Dave Heineman is wasting no time promoting his push for tax-relief legislation in 2014. Heineman scooped his own State of the State address — scheduled for delivery this morning — by revealing his plan Tuesday night to seek up to $500 million in tax cuts over the next three years.

The $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill introduced Monday evening leaves the vast majority of pension cuts to military retirees intact, only exempting disabled veterans from the controversial provision included in last month’s budget deal. The spending bill amends a section of the bipartisan budget agreement that hit the military with reduced retirement pay, while also leaving generous benefits for civilian federal retirees untouched. The new spending bill, negotiated by House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) and Chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee Barbara Mikulski (D., Md.), would only restore retirement benefits for 17.5 percent of military retirees. Title...

Democratic senators are pleading with President Obama to abandon his proposal to trim Social Security benefits before it becomes a liability for them in the midterm elections. The president proposed a new formula for calculating benefits in his budget last year, in hopes that the olive branch to Republicans would persuade them to back tax increases in a broader fiscal deal. But Democratic lawmakers say Obama should shelve the idea now that they are facing a difficult midterm election where they need to turn out the liberal base to preserve their Senate majority. “I’m not sure why we should be...

"...That's why we're modernizing our unique system. Under the new approach—made possible by the Affordable Care Act and approved by the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services—Maryland will implement a groundbreaking new system of health care delivery. Using the rate setting structure, the state will set global budgets and other alternative approaches to payment that reward clinical systems of care for providing improved outcomes at lower costs. Support for this new demonstration has come from a coalition of the hospitals, the insurance companies and the state all working together with a common vision....Under the new model, our hospitals have committed...