11/11/10
From Military.com
Presidential Panel: Freeze Military Pay
Happy Veterans Day
| November 11, 2010 Stars and Stripes|by Jeff Schogol A presidential commission on reducing the deficit has recommended freezing basic military pay and housing allowances for three years starting in 2011, according to a draft report of the commission’s recommendations posted online Wednesday. “A three-year freeze at 2011 levels for these compensation categories would save the federal government $7.6 billion in compensation and tax expenditures, as well as another $1.6 billion in less retirement accrual, or $9.2 billion total discretionary savings in 2015,” it said. The move would not affect combat pay, the report said. A White House spokesman could not be reached for comment. The recommendation is likely to get a cool reception in Congress. “I’m not sure there will be much of an appetite to freeze military pay while our troops are fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,” said Josh Holly, a spokesman for Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee, in an e-mail. As it now stands, the House of Representatives has passed a defense spending bill that would give troops a 1.9 percent pay raise next year. The Senate is calling for a 1.4 percent pay raise, but it has not yet voted on the matter. Congress needs to come to an agreement on defense spending by the end of the year or pay will remain flat in January. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has looked for other ways to trim defense spending, such as closing Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., but that proposal has been roundly criticized by Virginia lawmakers, including Democratic U.S. Sen. Jim Webb.
This article is provided courtesy of
Stars and Stripes, which got its start as a newspaper for Union
troops during the Civil War, and has been published continuously
since 1942 in Europe and 1945 in the Pacific. Stripes reporters have
been in the field with American soldiers, sailors and airmen in
World War II, Korea, the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf War, Bosnia and
Kosovo, and are now on assignment in the Middle East.
What excellent timing, to announce a 3 year pay freeze on Veterans Day, in wartime too. We have young men and women serving in hostile areas, risking their lives, performing a priceless duty for the nation, and our leadership is pinching pennies out of their pay to waste on pork and welfare. This is very wrong. I served from 1967 to 1994. Even with a substantial pay raise during the Reagan Administration, our pay never came close to matching that of our civilian counterparts. (And you had to do a lot of interpolating and disregarding to make up for the fact that civilians didn't have to work long hours in uncomfortable places while people were trying to kill them.) But we didn't do our jobs just for the pay, we did it for patriotism, or pride in doing a job that a lot of people were afraid to do, or the team spirit of knowing that you were working with people who had the "Right Stuff". And the government promised us that if we served for a full career, and survived to retire, they'd provide retirement pay that, wouldn't make us wealthy, but would be enough to pay the bills; and there would be free medical care available when we needed it. Now, we retired GIs check the news every day expecting to see that our retirement pay has been cut below subsistence level or that our Medicare-based medical care has been gutted. The Native Americans, as depicted in the old cowboy movies, learned a long time ago that the "Great White Father in Washington DC speaks with forked tongue". Next time we have a war, how about we parachute in the president and the congress. We GIs will sit back here in the states and kibbitz about the Rules of Engagement
|