{"id":36234,"date":"2013-06-13T14:13:13","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T18:13:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=36234"},"modified":"2013-06-13T14:14:58","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T18:14:58","slug":"white-house-determined-to-balance-the-budget-on-the-backs-of-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=36234","title":{"rendered":"White House determined to balance the budget on the backs of veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other day, Military.com<\/a> reported that the House blocked the Department of Defense hikes to Tricare premiums and co-pays for retirees, doing their best to keep faith with veterans. Today Military.com<\/a> reports that the White House has threatened to veto House Armed Services Committee\u2019s proposed 2014 defense budget (National Defense Authorization Act \u2013 H.R. 1960) in the event that it lands on the President’s desk. <\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026if the bill [HR 1960] is presented to the President for approval in its current form, the President\u2019s senior advisers would recommend that the President veto the bill.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The White House statement doesn’t enumerate the reasons that they’d recommend a veto, which is always helpful when issuing threats like that – since no one knows specifically what to change in order to get the President’s approval. But we can guess, since the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs were up there the other day trying to screw retirees to the wall with Tricare hikes. And if we read the White House’s position on veterans’ benefits, we can read between the lines to determine their intent;<\/p>\n

The Administration believes that military retirees deserve an excellent, sustainable health care benefit. For this reason, the Administration strongly supports its requested TRICARE fee initiative that seeks to control the spiraling health care costs of the Department of Defense (DOD) while keeping retired beneficiaries\u2019 share of these costs well below the levels experienced when the TRICARE program was implemented in the mid-1990s. The projected FY 2014 TRICARE savings of $902 million and $9.3 billion through FY 2018 are essential for DOD to successfully address rising personnel costs. DOD needs these savings to balance and maintain investments for key defense priorities, especially amidst significant fiscal challenges posed by statutory spending caps. The Administration strongly urges the Congress to support the proposed TRICARE fee initiative.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, all I needed to hear was the fact that we deserve an excellent and sustainable health care benefit and I knew what was coming. Just like the president’s promise at the American Legion convention a few years back when I heard him say that he wasn’t going to balance the budget on the backs of veterans, while he was planning to do just that. <\/p>\n

If that’s what we deserve, then why are they raiding our Tricare surplus to spend in other areas of Defense? That’s a surplus of $708 million, which you would think would go a long ways towards providing an excellent and sustainable health care benefit. Wouldn’t you think?<\/p>\n

No, the Department of Defense see retirees as a source of income and our out-of-pocket Tricare costs as a tax they can use to splurge on their shit. If there’s a surplus, obviously we’re sustaining our health care program just fine and we don’t need a hike to keep the benefit running as smoothly as it’s currently running.<\/p>\n

The civilians at DoD don’t think that we earned that health care benefit, or at least that we haven’t paid for it enough to their satisfaction. And now they have the uniforms thinking the same way, or at least saying that out loud in public. Yeah, there were civilians at DoD who lobbied for this during the Bush Administration, but when Congress shut them down, they stayed down until the next year when they did the dance all over again. <\/p>\n

But this White House is so determined to make veterans pay, they’ll continue to take bites at the apple until there’s nothing left. I’d say “I told you so”, but I’m better than that. Well, almost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The other day, Military.com reported that the House blocked the Department of Defense hikes to Tricare … White House determined to balance the budget on the backs of veterans<\/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":[46,86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-veteran-health-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36234","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=36234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}