[SkyPilot]

"Similar to military retirees’ cuts, expect changes to Social Security to happen quickly, with politicians explaining the bad news in percentages and the good news in dollars and cents. For example, on the campaign trail, the candidate’s message to military families is that this is just a small, simple 1% cut for a few years. However, when touting their leadership in deficit cutting and spending reduction, it’s portrayed as part of an important two-year, trillion-dollar deal. No one, however, talks about how military families may have to earn and/or save an extra $308 a month for the next ten or fifteen years to make up for the reduction.

I believe the author of this article, Robert Laura, is dead on with this theory (i.e. some in Congress think that using the military cuts, it will pave the way for Social Security cuts). Particularly Paul Ryan.

I agree there is something very tangible about his theory, because the slashing of COLAs for our retired military and currently serving military makes almost no fiscal or political sense whatsoever. By cutting cost of living raises for all retired and future retired military, the government (that spends $10.46 Billion per day), "saves" $6 Billion over ten years.

Is is really worth it? This betrayal of our military (right before Christmas) has set off a political time bomb, and even the general public is outraged. Paul Ryan's reputation among pro-military and many Conservatives has plummeted. His Facebook page comments are a disaster. Comments to news articles are overwhelmingly negative. Letters to expressing outrage are pouring in. Anyone with a conscious realizes that cutting pensions for military retirees (while we are giving away hundreds of Billions in new spending to ObamaCare takers, illegals, and the rest) is pornographic.

Disabled military retirees are not even exempt from these cuts. A proposed "technical correction" that both parties are proposing in January won't help most of them either - they only want to exempt those who retired early for injury, or even for non-combat or non-duty related illness. VA rated disabled or our severely wounded veteran retirees are not even mentioned - their retirement pensions are still to be cut (that's another story.....Hagel and Ryan don't want to exempt them because they want even more cuts to VA disability - exempting them from pension cuts won't help in their quest to screw our military even more in the future).

So why do it?

I believe some in Washington think they can parlay these cuts into general Entitlement cuts, but there are problems with this proposal:

1. The Democrats in the House and Senate have no desire to reform Social Security; even when a chained CPI cost of living proposal was sent to Harry Reid during the Fiscal Cliff negotiations last year, Reid literally threw it in his Senate office fireplace (really)

2. Using our military (including combat disabled retirees) as a pawn in the Washington game of entitlements and spending is beyond wrong

3. The military retiree and currently serving men and women in uniform should be the last group targeted for spending cut - NOT THE FIRST.

[SkyPilot]

Nice salute there Paul.

[2ndDivisionVet]

E-mail I received earlier about an anti-veteran union leader:

This was on facebook and of course created a huge response. facebook keeps deleting the pic and information and posts of what she said about vets.

Pass it around, get it out there.

I saved the pic, here is a link to a screenshot uploaded to photobucket.

Despicable woman.

http://s1360.photobucket.com/user/mellycoo22/media/1530418_635905939800226_539785827_n_zps539185e9.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

[Venturer]

What amazes me about this is that the same people who want to cut military pensions are pushing for a huge raise in the minimum wage.

Set the minimum wage increase on the cost of living increase and give them 1%.

[maine yankee]

How many retirees are not paying attention to this news?

They will only notice when their check is smaller.

Notice this doesn’t kick in until after the next election.

[PLD]

these are the jerks that passed the bill to take money away from our troops..and don't forget the Muslim he wants it passed most of all..I guess to pay for his group vacations..REMEMBER THESE NAMES IN November.

[PLD]

[RetiredArmy]

I’ve told every young person that I have been asked, NO. Do not go into the military. You are only going to be screwed and used and abused and tossed aside. It has taken me TWENTY ONE YEARS (21) TO WIN MY FIGHT WITH THE VA. I only just now, in my 60’s won and got my disability on FIVE surgeries that I have had in the past 6 years because of damages to my body in the military. Only now have I received what I should have been receiving for 21 years. At least from here to death (or Rapture of the Church) I will get something for the pain, suffering and disabilities of my damaged body. I tell these kids that IF they just have to go in, to go in for 3 years, learn a skill they can sell outside and GET OUT!!! NO FULL MILITARY CAREER. GET OUT. THEY WILL LIE TO YOU, SCREW YOU AND YOU WILL IN THE END GET BARELY ANYTHING THE LYING GOVERNMENT AND PENTAGON SAYS YOU WILL GET AFTER YOUR RETIRE!!! Tell all your young family members and friends this!!!

[blueunicorn6]

Maybe they will cut the COLA to the social security recipients. They’ll just give them a bonus check. That’s what they did the last time we had a “shared sacrifice”. The military took the cut and the social security recipients took the checks.
The purpose of the Democrat party is to elect thieves into office so they can loot the public treasuries.

[maica]

...cost of living adjustments for working age military retirees starting in 2015

Key words: Working Age

Why should healthy veterans who retire in their early 40s believe that getting a check with generous COLAs for the next 40 years is healthy for the country?

This article that uses a figure of $3700 'loss' in one year, based on a 1% lower COLA has to be doing math that multiplies 3700 by 100 equalling 370000.

Please tell me what retiree gets $370,000 a year in retirement checks.

If a Forbes writer and his editor cannot do math what hope is there for any opinion in that magazine.

[RFEngineer]

Government benefits of every stripe are going to be cut. It is unavoidable.

The only way we can pay every check recipient everything they think they are owed or entitled to in the future is to have a vibrant private sector that is prosperous enough to afford to pay for it all cheerfully.

We do not have that. So we will have squabbling between check recipients over who deserves a check before the other, or who gets cut or who doesn’t.

The fact is that without a vibrant and prosperous private sector, nobody gets paid their government checks. Nobody.

How do we rebuild a vibrant and prosperous private sector economy so everybody can get what they think they are owed?

[tbw2]

What is the typical military pension for the non-disabled?
And what is the typical military payment to the disabled vets?

[blueunicorn6]

Clinton took The Cold War Peace Dividend back in the 90s. Where is our War On Poverty Peace Dividend? The Democrats promise their loyal voters the moon and then run the country into the dirt. If anyone is serious about solving the problems, then the first thing to do is examine all the rules, regulations and laws in this country. We need to stop putting a straitjacket on American business. Turn them loose. Private sector jobs CREATE tax money. Government jobs CONSUME tax money.

[goldstategop]

Conservatives complain the poor have too many benefits and then they turn around and complain veterans’ benefits should not be cut.

Its not a case of principles but defending your favorite constituency’s entitlement. Every one it seems, has one they want to keep. That’s why we can’t get a handle on runaway spending.

Keep off your hands my benefits - take away the other fellow’s. That’s an attitude that not going to make our current social safety net solvent for future generations and truly help those in need.

We need to have a debate on how much sacrifice is acceptable. When the bread and circuses come to an end, what happens to the stability of the country? And those most mad at Paul Ryan are not offering any alternatives on how they would reform the system that keeps Washington in the red year after year.

[Alas Babylon!]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again.

Military retirement is not about fairness, it is about retention.

Retention means you keep people who would otherwise go off and do their own thing, like making a career, earning their fortune—or not, and just being a civilian.

The military values and needs mid-rank officers and NCOs. If they cannot be retained then you wind up with a force that cannot make a good decision and you ultimately lose wars and wind up with a lot of people killed. How much does THAT cost the USA?

It’s insurance. Sure, you could save a lot of money by cancelling all your insurance policies, but what will you do when events occur (and they ALWAYS do)?

At some point, this will hurt the military—and our nation—as it will be much harder to retain those people they really need, and frankly, it is those people who are the primary reason why our nation’s military is number 1 in the world.

We can lose efficiency very, very quickly, too. All it takes is 5 percent a year drop in reenlistments and you’re back to late 1970’s era hollow military. A US military that, in measuring effectiveness in NATO exercises, for example, that ranks bellow Belgium and Denmark! I was in then. I remember at Fort Carson, Colorado (around 1978) they had a battalion of child molesters, rapists and other sociopaths that they were trying to rehab rather than let go because the Army couldn’t afford to lose any more NCOs.

It bothers me that in all the discourse on this issue no one—here or elsewhere—is looking at the costs from a retention standpoint.

[taildragger]

1. The Democrats in the House and Senate have no desire to reform Social Security;

They don't want to cut a thing and live in la-la land of violating the Accounting Equation with a Printing Press. Remember when who was it Hank Paulson under GWB wanted to buy Real T-Bills and not the funny money IOU's in SSI and he got heck for it? And how about GWB attempting real SSI reform and nothing was done and he got eviscerated for it. In the grand scheme of things he was right and it is what 8 years later and nothing has been done?

We all know SSI, M-care, M-caid are insolvent models, what they don't get it the Tea Party is in fact a screed for them to treat us like adults, sit down and have the conversation that changes are needed, they will hurt and they are too dysfunctional to do so....

[mrsmith]

It’s the Fall of the Roman Empire all over again.
Cut the military, grow the Bread and Circus.

It’s ‘interesting’ to be present and see it happening. I always had the impression that the Romans didn’t know what they were doing then but it’s obvious that like us they knew and couldn’t stop themselves. The maintenance of the establishment is conflated with the maintenance of the state by the leaders and the populace is glued in front of their establishment subsidized TVs eating their SNAP-bought cookies and drinking their SNAP-bought sodas.

Yeah, I’m old enough and have seen it coming so long it’s merely ‘interesting’ to me.

[GeronL]

meanwhile $1.5 billion goes to Somalia