{"id":38830,"date":"2013-12-12T13:26:42","date_gmt":"2013-12-12T18:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38830"},"modified":"2013-12-12T13:26:42","modified_gmt":"2013-12-12T18:26:42","slug":"defense-budget-screws-vets-and-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38830","title":{"rendered":"Defense budget screws vets and troops"},"content":{"rendered":"

You know that anything draft dodger Harry Reid supports isn’t something that is vet friendly, but he’s praising the defense budget that was hammered out last night. It saves some the defense expenditures, but it reduces future pension and pay increases for Cost of Living Allowances (COLA) for the troops, while preserving the COLA increases for federal employees. From Stars & Stripes<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Democrats decried the fact that the deal does not extend unemployment benefits, which expire Dec. 31, and that federal workers hired after Dec. 31, 2013, will have to contribute 1.3 percent more to their retirement funds.<\/p>\n

Military advocates are left wanting, too: Veterans who retire from the military before age 62 will see a reduction in their annual cost-of-living benefit increase. Retirees 62 and older, and those retired on disability, would not be affected.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a compromise,\u201d Reid said. \u201cWe didn\u2019t get what we wanted. They didn\u2019t get what they wanted. But that\u2019s what legislation is all about, working together. \u2018Compromise\u2019 is not a bad word.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But, in this case, the “compromise” screwed veterans (a traditional Republican voting base) while preserving the support for traditional Democrat voters. So yeah, compromise is a bad word, since it’s about preserving a voter base, rather than doing what’s right. As it is, the bill reduces the COLA allowance for military retirees and the troops to less that the Consumer Price Index (the measure for inflation), while it doesn’t affect the COLA for retired government employees. <\/p>\n

To give you an idea how that affects military pensions, the first month I retired from the Army, my pension was less than $12,000\/year, today, twenty years later, it’s $18,000 from COLA increases. I didn’t get rich, but my money kept pace with inflation, and it was something that my family could depend on in a tough job market. It’s better as I head into my retirement than it was when I retired from the military. But, Congress would rather that I retire at my pension twenty years ago at two-thirds of the current purchasing power.<\/p>\n

I can only guess that the reduction in COLA won’t affect Congressional pensions, either.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You know that anything draft dodger Harry Reid supports isn’t something that is vet friendly, but … Defense budget screws vets and troops<\/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":[89,118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress-sucks","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38830","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=38830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}