Posted on 04/25/2015 7:47:04 AM PDT by SandRat
Congress on Thursday took a first, perhaps historic step toward phasing out the 20-year-or-bust retirement system the U.S. military has used to shape and retain its career forces since the end of World War II.
The replacement plan, as endorsed by the House armed services’ personnel subcommittee, is a blended system that would cut by 20 percent the value of future force annuities in return for an added tool to build nest eggs earlier — a 401(k)-like Thrift Savings Plan with government matching of service member TSP contributions.
The enhanced TSP, with matching of monthly deposits of up to five percent basic pay, would provide something the current High-3 plan cannot: portable retirement benefits available not only to careerists but most of the 83 percent of service members who leave service short of 20 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at svherald.com ...
If the service member dies before his retirement time will the accumulated monies go to his designated heirs?
First let’s cut the size of the government and the handouts like welfare, Obamacare, etc.
Especially handouts to illegals.
Then cut the handouts to nations that spit on us.
Then the salaries and retirement of civilian government employees.
Then the idiotic research grants like a government funded study on “the link between cocaine and the mating habits of quail”
Top ten: Government spending at its stupidest
http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/20/top-ten-government-spending-at-its-stupidest/
30 Stupid Things The Government Is Spending Money On
http://mrconservative.com/2012/03/2471-30-government-waste-projects/2/
20 Ridiculous Ways the Government Wasted Your Money
http://mic.com/articles/76985/20-ridiculous-ways-the-government-wasted-your-money-in-2013
This is not totally bad. There are definitely advantages to this. It will like hurt long term retention, but might strengthen mid-term retention. I may well have gotten out at the 8-10 year point if something like this was in place. However, in hindsight, I’m glad it wasn’t.
This just figures. This government shows no respect for our soldiers and legal citizens. Why wouldn’t they degrade them to that fake retirement scam called the 401k? That was never designed to be a real retirement plan. But rather, a tax shelter for risking money to ‘add’ to retirement. What a crock.
One of the reasons our honorable soldiers ‘stay’ in the military once they join is so they can reach the magic number of years to retire and take care of their families.
This degrading of military benefits is very sad and troubling. Just like the horrendous treatment this Government and it’s colleges have been dishing out to those brave souls who risk their lives to protect us.
They don't pay servicemen enough to contribute to 401K's. As a general rule enlisted men live paycheck to paycheck and now they want to rob them of that to pay for their own retirement.
The military is the lowest paid form of government employment and now they want to give them the lowest paid form of retirement benefits.
One of the factors of the current retirement plan is that those who retire at 20 years can be recalled to active duty at the convenience of the government. Will that provision be eliminated? I had a great uncle who was recalled to active duty during WWII after retiring at 29 years. And I know a couple of friends who retired at 20 years who were recalled to active duty after the invasion in Iraq because of their language specialties.
Man. The Congress sure does worry a lot about military retirement.
I haven’t seen anything that says the military retirement system is running out of money. I have seen a lot about how social security is busted.
I would guess that there are fewer people retiring from the military these days. But there are increasing numbers of people drawing social security and food stamps.
Why, it’s almost like Congress wants to get their hands on that military retirement money to use it to buy votes.
Also, with an up or out policy a sizable fraction are let go in mid career. I was and back then they gave a severance. That big severence got taxed pretty soundly. This would ease that as well
not currently
Can I assume retirees under this new system will have Social Security benefits at age 66?
But here's the thing. Most private/government pension plans also require at least 25 years of service. The military should require the same. That would seem like a reasonable trade-off.
One can’t compare 25 years of service in either a private firm or a non-deploying government job (where the worker gets to go home every night) and the same amount of time on active duty deploying constantly. Everyone I know who served around 25 years had at least 15 PCS moves, 10 years sea duty and 6-7 full deployments.
That’s what I was thinking! Who can afford to pay in, in their early and middle years?! Pay Congress according to this and see how fast it changes.
Check this one out.
That's true. It almost goes without saying. But if there is military vesting after 5 or 10 years (which I'm strongly in favor of), there has to be a trade-off somewhere.
The Hillary globalist types intend to bury individual wealth and infiltrate every tract of income.
If it *looks* good,....... it’s probably not a duck.
Service members already have a thrift savings plan matched dollar for dollar by the government on the first 3% of basic pay and 50 cents on the dollar for the next 2% of basic pay. The new plan matches dollar for dollar on the full 5% of basic pay. It cuts the retirement at 20 by 10% and at 30 by 15%.
Huge issues are ownership, the definition of portability, the rejection of lump sum payment, and the fraud of “tax deferred” (far better to pay taxes when income is low). The volatility of the market under the past 2 or 3 presidents is also an issue. That supposed next egg was worth about half when the market crashed a few years back and then again a few years before that. And that is why their pipe dream of saying the investment grows by 7.5 percent annually is realized for the lie that it is.
Ownership of the government contribution is a huge issue. Often they separate into different accounts the personal contributions and the contributor contributions. They allow ownership of the personal contributions but allow use of the contributor contributions only for annuity purposes. That annuity rate is always set low and any principle remaining belongs to the contributor and not to the heir.
In sum, it’s crazy to accept a lesser plan when there is already a savings plan.
And as Marlowe says, asking from cash contributions from our lower ranks is asking for cash at a cash-strapped time of their lives.
Dear Congress: You are evidently not smart enough to figure out how to solve our budget problems.
Here is how you do it.
1. Seal the borders.
2. Get rid of useless rules, laws and regulations that stifle the American private sector.
3. Do everything possible to make our American private sector stronger than any other nation’s private sector.
4. As private sector jobs increase, the amount of tax revenue coming to the government will increase. This will help pay budget debt/deficit.
5. Layoff government employees so they can take private sector jobs. This will reduce the budget.
6. Reducing the federal budget will mean less taxes on the private sector which will allow them to hire more employees.
7. This will provide more income to the government which can then layoff more government employees and reduce taxes on the private sector.
8. No one said to dump poison or hire children or throw workers into machinery.
9. Repeat as necessary.
People are making money. Government balances budget.
How hard is that to understand?
“Most private/government pension plans also require at least 25 years of service. The military should require the same. That would seem like a reasonable trade-off.”
Only about 17% of the people that enter active duty get to 20 years. They have to go through High Year of Tenure (get passed over 2 times for promotion, you are gone). Reduction in Forces (RIF), then if you do get to 20 you will probably face one these: Selective Early Retirement Board (SERB). If you are one of the 17%, you have probably moved 7 or more times. Some of those assignments would be unaccompanied tours. So the beatings on military benefits will continue until morale improves.
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