{"id":38484,"date":"2013-11-18T07:37:48","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T12:37:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38484"},"modified":"2013-11-18T07:37:48","modified_gmt":"2013-11-18T12:37:48","slug":"hunter-we-must-slash-compensation-for-military","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38484","title":{"rendered":"Hunter: We must slash compensation for military"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chock Block sends us a link from Breaking Defense<\/a> which reports that Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, probably the most stalwart defender of the troops, wants to slash future compensation of military members who haven’t joined yet;<\/p>\n

Career soldiers can retire at 42, get a great deal on Tricare health insurance, take home a pension, and get paid a good private-sector salary on top of that. That can\u2019t continue to be the norm for the military and Congress must create a two-tier pay system, says Rep. Duncan Hunter, Marine Corps reservist and member of the House Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time for Congress to look at this,\u201d Hunter said at the inaugural Defense One conference. The message must be sent that, \u201cIf you join tomorrow things are going to be different.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hunter was careful to argue that those currently in the military should still get the benefits promised them, but the next group must receive reduced benefits, because growing compensation costs will eat up a majority of the defense budget should they go unchecked. If a servicemember retires and gets a good private sector job \u2014 say as a defense contractor \u2014 then they don\u2019t need Tricare, Hunter said: \u201cYou should have to buy into [private] healthcare and stop being subsidized by the American taxpayer.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope you millionaire retirees are happy that you’re responsible for busting the budget. While I appreciate much of what Hunter has done for the military members over the years, I don’t see him recommending cutting the compensation for retired members of Congress or suggesting that their healthcare “stop being subsidized by the American taxpayer”. Reducing the compensation of servicemembers will only affect retention as evidenced among our comments when these stories roll in and the military will begin to bleed experience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chock Block sends us a link from Breaking Defense which reports that Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter, … Hunter: We must slash compensation for military<\/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":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress-sucks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38484","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=38484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38484\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}