{"id":39440,"date":"2014-01-24T08:53:12","date_gmt":"2014-01-24T13:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=39440"},"modified":"2014-01-24T08:53:12","modified_gmt":"2014-01-24T13:53:12","slug":"more-of-not-balancing-the-budget-on-the-backs-of-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=39440","title":{"rendered":"More of not balancing the budget on the backs of Veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Several folks have sent us this link to Stars & Stripes<\/a> about the Department of Defense’s plans to close down a number of commissaries (run by the Defense Commissary Agency or DeCA) in an effort to save more money. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf DeCA\u2019s budget is cut to such a magnitude, it would ultimately require DeCA to close stores or change the way it delivers the commissary benefit,\u201d a source with knowledge of the proposed cuts told Military.com. \u201cBut those options would mean military families would have to pay more for their groceries, significantly reducing the non-pay compensation benefit provided through the commissaries. Once again, military families are being forced to sacrifice their hard-earned money to achieve deficit reductions by having their benefits reduced or eliminated.\u201d<\/p>\n

DeCA\u2019s $1.4 billion annual budget funds employee salaries, utilities and pays for food to be shipped overseas. A congressionally mandated 5 percent surcharge on all commissary sales pays for other operation costs such as construction and building maintenance.<\/p>\n

A recent study by DeCA found that using the commissary saves shoppers an average of 30.5 percent annually when compared to other stores off base.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You know, if it was just the commissaries, I’d probably say ‘meh’, but if you add this to cutting COLAs, cutting the pay increases and bonuses of active duty troops, cutting overall manpower, adjusting the retirement plans, raising healthcare out-of-pocket costs for veterans, I don’t see how the president could say that he’s not balancing the budget on the backs of veterans. I guess if you like your commissary, you can keep it, unless you can’t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Several folks have sent us this link to Stars & Stripes about the Department of Defense’s … More of not balancing 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],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39440","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\/39440","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=39440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}