{"id":38870,"date":"2013-12-15T08:53:11","date_gmt":"2013-12-15T13:53:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=38870"},"modified":"2013-12-15T09:25:46","modified_gmt":"2013-12-15T14:25:46","slug":"applause-for-screwing-the-troops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=38870","title":{"rendered":"Applause for screwing the troops"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chock Block<\/a> sends us a link to Breaking Defense<\/a> and article written by Russell Rumbaugh, whoever he is. He applauds Congress’ budget deal this last week which cut Cost of Living Allowances for military retirees, saying that it proves that Congress can screw the troops when they want to. As Chock Block points out, the photo that Rumbaugh uses for his article about cutting Pentagon waste is of a veterinarian operating on a military family’s pet. How that impacts Pentagon spending, I’m not sure.<\/p>\n

But, Rumbaugh writes;<\/p>\n

For the most adamant, personnel costs are about to eat the entire Department of Defense budget, reducing it to just a welfare agency and leaving the United States at the mercy of its enemies. Since the creation of the All-Volunteer Force, spending per servicemember has risen inexorably. The Department\u2014as with the rest of the country\u2014has watched its healthcare costs dramatically outpace inflation. Since the defense budget started expanding in the late 1990s, Congress has consistently heaped largesse on defense personnel. It repealed the retirement reform passed in the 1980s just before it kicked in, let former military members double dip by taking their military retirement pay while drawing a full civil service salary, allowed retirees to keep both their retirement and disabled pay, created the $10 billion-a-year TRICARE for Life Medicare supplement, and expanded eligibility for both healthcare and retirement benefits.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe Rumbaugh could glance for a moment at history – the history of the All-Volunteer Force is a sad one. During the Carter Administration defense spending was so dismal, that when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and Carter figured that he might actually need a military force to stop them, he reinstituted the draft, because recruiting volunteers probably wouldn’t work. The Carter Administration’s answer to recruiting was issuing those of us who lived in the barracks a colorful bed spread. I kid you not. <\/p>\n

When I got promoted to Sergeant from Corporal, my pay shot up $25\/month. And I never had a pet that I had to take to the vet’s office. And, oh, yeah, it was Carter who ended what Rumbaugh calls “double-dipping”, allowing a military retiree to also draw a federal pension. It was Clinton who brought it back in 1999 mainly because the Federal government needed the military retiree pool to fill it’s ranks with experienced and dedicated people and military retirees wouldn’t take a federal job if they would loose a pension when they retired. It was in the government’s best interest to hire veterans, not some greedy move by VSOs to enrich retirees.<\/p>\n

Every administration tries to cut personnel costs at the Pentagon, even former President Bush, but this one is more successful than the others because they think that that the US will never need a military force again, somehow. they figure that they can resolve their problems like the lawyers they are and that when the military isn’t at war, they can parade for the emperor. How much can that cost?<\/p>\n

The problem with Rumbaugh and the Obama Administration is that they think that all factors remain constant irrespective of their policies. They figure, for example, that recruiting for the military is high now, so will it be after they make military service unattractive and take away all of the incentives that drive recruiting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chock Block sends us a link to Breaking Defense and article written by Russell Rumbaugh, whoever … Applause for screwing the 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":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870","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=38870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}