{"id":23722,"date":"2011-06-03T11:38:07","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T15:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=23722"},"modified":"2011-06-03T12:16:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-03T16:16:11","slug":"mullens-tosses-servicemembers-under-the-bus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=23722","title":{"rendered":"Mullen tosses servicemembers under the bus"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen just tossed us all under the bus. In a link from Adirondack Patriot<\/a>, Mullens warned that “everything is on the table” including pay and health benefits for active duty and retired servicemembers;<\/p>\n

Mullen went further, saying savings should be found in pay and benefits costs before cuts to programs and personnel.<\/p>\n

“We need to avoid just making the relatively easy decision [to] just cash in force structure,” Mullen said. “We have to go through everything else — and ‘force structure’ are platforms and people — before we get to that point, because that’s why we’re here.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The military has been tasked with finding a $half-trillion in savings over the next 12 years – not like the EPA or the Commerce Department or Health and Human Services…or any other federal agency which have only cut back minimally on increases in spending. Certainly not in cutting back on their current or retired employees’ benefits.<\/p>\n

I always thought I could count on the military leadership to stand up for the troops they command. I guess that’s not an option in this climate – Mullen seems almost eager to toss us all aside to please his political masters.<\/p>\n

Are there reasonable cuts that can be made? Sure. My favorite example is the pharmacy at Walter Reed. A year ago, you walked up to a machine and took a number to get in line for service. <\/p>\n

Now they employ a series of three women that you have to stand in line to see and the last woman tears your ticket from that machine for you. Do they ask you questions about your prescriptions? Nope. You show them your ID and they tap away at a computer – they each have one, and you have to show each of them your ID and they each tap at their computer. <\/p>\n

I figure each computer costs about $3000 and they probably pay each of those women more than $30k\/year to do what we used to do without them. How many jobs are there like those in the military? That’s where I’d start if I was at all serious about saving money.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen just tossed us all under the bus. In … Mullen tosses servicemembers under the bus<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,84,86,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-military-issues","category-veteran-health-care","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}