I say cut the Pentagon budget by 95%. The Texas National Guard can protect the Rio Grande from invasion. George Wimp Bush did his duty for the Guard.
I say cut the Pentagon budget by 95%. The Texas National Guard can protect the Rio Grande from invasion. George Wimp Bush did his duty for the Guard.
I say cut the Pentagon budget by 95%. The Texas National Guard can protect the Rio Grande from invasion. George Wimp Bush did his duty for the Guard.
This is my thought on the excessive pay and benefits for military. Triple the salary for personel for only the period of time they are serving in a war zone. Otherwise cut out everything. The free education and retirement after 20 years is simply ridiculous. Most of the enlisted men could NOT get jobs in a competive job market.
But if you are serving in a dangerous situation then and only then do you deserve extra pay.
crazy person wrote:
Son, the cost of freedom is priceless. Where would this country be if we never stopped the evil Iraqi empire? Or stopped the Libyan leader from massacring his own people (but let Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia do whatever they pleased.)
It's people like you that undermine the democracy of this country and place doubts in the minds of the young men and women protecting our country. Shame on you. Shame. On. You.
No there are limits to what we can pay our military. Your post is not rational.
Lets be honest about this. Think back about your graduating high school class and think about the guys who enlisted. There are exceptions but as a group they could not get into college or get good jobs.
They were lucky to have the service option.
Killa Bugs wrote:
Gov't employees are overpaid.
They are actually paid quite a bit less than a comparable private sector worker.
Why pay those stupid ass fools a good wage. Just pay them minimum wage and NO retirement period. The Pentagon can hire Indian mercenaries for $10/day and they actually fight man to man versus US pusses who hide behind drones, stealth helos, and humvees.
When deployed you already get paid more.
Without the retirement or education benefits you'd have about a zero chance of getting people to sign up.
Alan
All I am saying is to pay them fair market value. And if you are in a high risk position you should get more than the employee serving stateside. But when you come back you should no longer get the high risk extra pay. And the free college - forget that.
If some of our branches of the service were privatized they wold never be given the crazy perks they get now. Also why is the government owning and running medical services through the VA. Are we socialists? Give a voucher if you have to and let the service men use it to buy the insurance they want.
It is a waste to see someone 40 yrs old and retired with a good pension from the USA. Its a bizarre system.
Some things I'd like to see:
1) Limit combat pay to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nobody living the high life at Camp Buering or some other base in Kuwait should get ANY combat pay. Don't even get me started with the Navy guys collecting combat pay for living on a ship in the Persian Gulf.
2) End "separation pay" - why should married soldiers get an extra $3000 for a deployment that a single soldier does not? Are single soldiers not separated from their lives and loved ones, too?
3) While on the topic of married soldiers, enforce "equal pay for equal work." Right now, married soldiers get paid a lot more than single soldiers because they "have to take care of the families." I know of no other profession where this occurs. If you need more money, tell your wife to get a job. That's what civilians have to do, and the military should be no different. This in itself would cut a ton of money from the military budget.
4) Retirement pay should not kick in right away. You have guys collecting "retirement" at age 38. They need to push this back to at least age 50. I hardly know of anybody who retired after 20 years and never had to work again. The pay is simply not that much. An E-7 who retires at 20 will get about $2100 per month for life; certainly not enough to live on, especially as you age and need medications, etc. Since nearly everyone gets a job as soon as they retire there is no need to have retirement pay start right away. Health insurance and other benefits should begin immediately.
5) Enlistment/reenlistment bonuses need to be severely cut and this is starting to happen. Only give bonuses for jobs that are extremely hard to fill and there is a severe shortage. Enlistment bonuses? Nobody deserves a bonus for signing up.
6) Lengthen the time between PCS moves. It costs a lot of money to shift people around the world. You can almost always find someone to fill an open position from another unit on the same post. No need to bring someone from Bragg in NC to Lewis in WA to fill a platoon sergeant opening. Other than OCONUS posts like Korea, tours at a duty station should be at least 5 years.
7) Lengthen the time in service before promotions to the NCO ranks. No way guys are ready to be NCOs in less than 4 years, especially if they've never been on a combat tour.
8) Close all schools on military bases in the USA. I think only Campbell and Knox still have high schools but I think every post has elementary and middle. The HS students already go off post to public schools; send the other students as well. Keep the on-post schools overseas.
9) Cut the number of soldiers. Already happening. It's about time.
10) Reduce the number of general officers. I think I read recently that there are 938 generals in the army. That's like one for every 750 soldiers give or take. What the hell? A brigade of 5000 soldiers is led by a colonel. What the hell are all these guys doing to earn their $120,000+ salaries and their big free houses? A lot of their jobs can be done by colonels for $25,000 less per year.
Hardly anything is going to make much of a difference the way the military spends money. There is $3.5 BILLION of construction going on at Ft Benning right now. Dumb things like building a new hospital right beside the current hospital.
eff those losers. any idiot stupid enough to join should get minimum wage after 20 years and no retirement pay nor medical insurance.
Does anyone here but me understand that there are 700,000 CIVILIANS working for the Department of Defense? One civilian for every 2 men in uniform--and THEY are NOT earning minimum wage, for the most part.
DOD is 50% of the entire Federal discretionary budget. When Clinton left, it was 20%--a big difference in the budget situations right there.
Get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and get back to having a "peace dividend" again, instead of wasting it. DOD and Homeland Security should be at the top of the chopping block if anyone is actually serious about cutting the Federal Budget.
Thoughtful post.
I will add another point about retirement. I don't know what the current situation is, but when I was in the military back in the '80s, it was not at all uncommon for military "retirees" to return immediately to their same jobs, or jobs substantially similar, as civilian employees of the federal government, drawing both their military retirement pay and their civilian pay for doing the same job for the same employer from whose service they had just "retired." Assuming that it still exists, this "double-dipping" is a corrupting and expensive practice. (Of course, similar issues arise when military "retirees" become government contractors, or employees of government contractors.)
How about the US raising taxes...
derp derp derp
trash those worthless pentagon civilian turds. new hires should get no retirement, no medical insurance, and made to work according to private industry work rules.
Also:
For new officers and soldiers, no retirement pay nor retirement medical insurance will be provided. You have 401K, Social Security, and Medicare just like the taxpayers have.
Decommission 1/2 the navy boats and discharge the sailors.
Terminate duplicate infantry commandos in the Navy and Air Force.
Only have 1 type of aircraft for every branch. I.E. no more AF fighter jet, NV fighter, CG fighter, MC fighter jet ...
Completely close bases in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, Turkey, Korea, Japan, Germany, England, etc.
No more "contractors".
No more "mercenaries".
Shut down 1/2 the bases in the USA.
Discharge 1/2 the generals and admirals.
Yeah, that'll do it...
ignoramus
Why don't you get in position to implement your ideas, oh wait, you wont because your policies are retarded.
Stick to venting on message boards bahahahahahaha
That is a terribly sound post but few politician would bring up these issues. Military compensation is a sacred cow because we are a military society. We spend a large portion of our GNP for the military. Much more than the other western countires. The militarization is such a fundamental value that few would speak publically about reducing compensation without incurring the wrath of the nation.In some ways our country is similiar to the old Soviet Union before its collapse. They had a military dominant economy, waged wars and had military spending that placed them in huge debt but they couldn't stop and they self destructed.
CarolinaRunner wrote:
Some things I'd like to see:
1) Limit combat pay to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Nobody living the high life at Camp Buering or some other base in Kuwait should get ANY combat pay. Don't even get me started with the Navy guys collecting combat pay for living on a ship in the Persian Gulf.
2) End "separation pay" - why should married soldiers get an extra $3000 for a deployment that a single soldier does not? Are single soldiers not separated from their lives and loved ones, too?
3) While on the topic of married soldiers, enforce "equal pay for equal work." Right now, married soldiers get paid a lot more than single soldiers because they "have to take care of the families." I know of no other profession where this occurs. If you need more money, tell your wife to get a job. That's what civilians have to do, and the military should be no different. This in itself would cut a ton of money from the military budget.
4) Retirement pay should not kick in right away. You have guys collecting "retirement" at age 38. They need to push this back to at least age 50. I hardly know of anybody who retired after 20 years and never had to work again. The pay is simply not that much. An E-7 who retires at 20 will get about $2100 per month for life; certainly not enough to live on, especially as you age and need medications, etc. Since nearly everyone gets a job as soon as they retire there is no need to have retirement pay start right away. Health insurance and other benefits should begin immediately.
5) Enlistment/reenlistment bonuses need to be severely cut and this is starting to happen. Only give bonuses for jobs that are extremely hard to fill and there is a severe shortage. Enlistment bonuses? Nobody deserves a bonus for signing up.
6) Lengthen the time between PCS moves. It costs a lot of money to shift people around the world. You can almost always find someone to fill an open position from another unit on the same post. No need to bring someone from Bragg in NC to Lewis in WA to fill a platoon sergeant opening. Other than OCONUS posts like Korea, tours at a duty station should be at least 5 years.
7) Lengthen the time in service before promotions to the NCO ranks. No way guys are ready to be NCOs in less than 4 years, especially if they've never been on a combat tour.
8) Close all schools on military bases in the USA. I think only Campbell and Knox still have high schools but I think every post has elementary and middle. The HS students already go off post to public schools; send the other students as well. Keep the on-post schools overseas.
9) Cut the number of soldiers. Already happening. It's about time.
10) Reduce the number of general officers. I think I read recently that there are 938 generals in the army. That's like one for every 750 soldiers give or take. What the hell? A brigade of 5000 soldiers is led by a colonel. What the hell are all these guys doing to earn their $120,000+ salaries and their big free houses? A lot of their jobs can be done by colonels for $25,000 less per year.
Hardly anything is going to make much of a difference the way the military spends money. There is $3.5 BILLION of construction going on at Ft Benning right now. Dumb things like building a new hospital right beside the current hospital.
crazy person wrote:
Son, the cost of freedom is priceless. Where would this country be if we never stopped the evil Iraqi empire? Or stopped the Libyan leader from massacring his own people (but let Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia do whatever they pleased.)
It's people like you that undermine the democracy of this country and place doubts in the minds of the young men and women protecting our country. Shame on you. Shame. On. You.
How many more people are going to miss the sarcasm here???
name: crazy person. Over the top rhetoric. Letting 4 dictatorships do what they please yet we should help Libya. Good lord, Letsrun.
Runningart2004 wrote:
When deployed you already get paid more.
Without the retirement or education benefits you'd have about a zero chance of getting people to sign up.
Alan
And the military is one of the last remaining areas of income mobility for lower-class youth. The average military service is 14.7 years, and the average for an officer is 11 years. SO the average enlisted man doesn't even get retirement.
It is a little humorous that the "enlisted moron" ideal is still floating around even though these days you need a high school diploma or GED and a decent score on the ASVAB to enlist, or they will turn you away. Honestly it is about as easy to enlist in the military today as it is to enroll at a bottom tier state university. And the enlisted men generally can only become NCOs with a much lower pay grade. To be a commissioned officer you pretty much have to have at least a BA, unless you make it through officers candidate school, and you have to have a B.A. before being made a captain of anything of equal pay grade.
As far as I can tell, a sergeant with 26 years is the highest pay grade an enlisted man can reach without getting a degree. He would make about 53K a year the final year.
Congress should eliminate for new hires:
early retirement
retirement medical insurance
retirement dental insurance