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Comment by Rex on December 4, 2010 at 3:28pm

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on November 28, 2010 at 11:51am

All I did was post the article and voice a personal opinion...don't shoot the messenger. Unless we cut spending AND raise revenue (yeah...taxes) there is no way out.....reality sucks

Comment by greg delany on November 27, 2010 at 11:03pm

Hey Paul,
I don't think for a minute the Koreans have the capability to fire any rocket near us. I do think the Chinese can and would. I just have the feeling that they are looking to take a bigger roll in world affairs. The reclaiming of island of Taiwan will be the next step they take. I don't know if this is bravado and bragging, but it was reported on the Chinese news.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SFTXJWV-I&NR=1

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on November 27, 2010 at 12:45pm

not convinced about the "missile" theory...hard to achieve orbital velocity from a sub so I have to go to an advanced physics theory....what goes up must come down. Where did it come down? And if he had launched a missile from a sub where is the bragging and bravado that he always displays. I've seen the same effect from planes several times during my life and hold to that theory....

Comment by greg delany on November 27, 2010 at 12:29pm

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=230425
This is no fat little dictator we are talking about. Kim Jong Il is famous for firing a rocket towards Hawaii or over Japan when he can't afford to feed his people, as long as China is angry with something America has done or is doing. Launching a rocket from a sub off the coast of California is a clear sign that the power struggles of this new world order are going to go through China first. 125 Men to every woman born since the one child only law was passed has made a big Army of frustrated Chinese dudes. Cutting the military budget now would be a big mistake. Getting a real leader as Commander in Chief, that will encourage economic growth instead of destroying it, would be a better idea.

Comment by Rex on November 27, 2010 at 11:52am

No weakness here ? i think we are all going to get a slap in the face with the fat little dictator . Yea lets screw our military personal in any way we can. Then when the crap hits the fan we can blame it on WHO ?

Comment by Rex on November 27, 2010 at 11:47am

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on November 27, 2010 at 11:12am

let the past be a lesson....every time we're tried to save serious money on defense we've ended up playing a serious game of catch-up when some porky little foreign dictator tries to take over the world.....and it usually costs some US lives in the process. I have no problem paying for defense as the alternative is not pretty....and have no problem trying to give our veterans the care they deserve for protecting my family and way of life......

The invoice for defense is pretty large....so to is the rest of government waste.....let's be smart in our spending. Being the world's policeman is a dirty job, but someone has to do it and I say let it be us......or we could let North Korea or Iran step up and volunteer........they seem eager

Comment by Mike Stark on November 27, 2010 at 11:01am

This is a terrible idea. If we must cut defense, we need to address what weapons and how many we really need to procure for the next 30 years. Taking it out of the serviceman's hide is utterly predictable for the tax cuts uber alles crowd. I'm willing to pay the cost in taxes to properly care for our veterans. Are you guys for that, or does putting it on your grandchildren's credit card make more sense to you?

Comment by NavyDads Admin (Paul) on November 27, 2010 at 7:43am

much more involved than just that:

from Navy Times

Military benefits in cross hairs
Draft plan suggests 3-year pay freeze, delayed retired pay and more to cut deficit

By Rick Maze

rmaze@militarytimes.com

Proposals for drastic cuts to mili­tary benefits — including a three­year, across-the-board pay freeze and making all service members wait until age 60 to draw retired pay — are all in play under draft recommendations from a presiden­tial commission looking at ways to reduce the federal budget deficit.

Freezing military basic pay and housing and food allowances for three years would save $9.2 billion by 2015, with $1.6 billion of that coming from reductions in future military retirement pay.

The panel also suggested freez­ing pay for three years for federal civilian employees, saving $20.4 billion by 2015.

Taken together, the 58 draft recommendations unveiled by the commis­sion’s co-chairmen, former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simp­son, R-Wyo., would save $372 billion by 2015, with $100.1 billion of that coming from defense programs, including personnel and weapons.

The recommendations are a small piece of a much broader plan that would revamp Social Security, the U.S. tax code and other govern­ment programs to eliminate $3.8 trillion from projected deficits over the next decade. The plan aims to reduce the deficit to “sustainable” levels by 2015 and balance the fed­eral budget by 2037.

For the military community, the draft recommendations issued Nov. 10 are “a serious threat, though not necessarily an imminent threat,” said retired Air Force Col. Steve Strobridge, government relations director for the Military Officers Association of America and a mili­tary pay and benefits expert.

He noted that many of the ideas put forth by the National Commis­sion on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform are a “rehash of rejected proposals” from past reviews.

Still, their inclusion in a larger package of governmentwide cuts increases their chances of being implemented in some form, he said. Because the changes are so sweeping, Strobridge does not see Congress adopting them right away. But he believes the specter of cuts will hang over service mem­bers and veterans for years.

The draft recommen­dations are far from a done deal. Fourteen of the 18 commissioners would have to agree for a recommendation to make it into the panel’s final report to Congress.

Congress plans to vote on the full recommendations, if any — the Senate first and then the House, if the Senate approves. If the proposals are not approved en bloc, that does not mean they are dead, as lawmakers could return to them either piecemeal or as a package at any time.





Perfect storm?

Strobridge described a kind of per­fect storm in which previously rejected ideas, such as dramatic increases in health care deductibles, co-pays and fees for military retirees, may not look so bad in com­parison to other pressing concerns, such as significant underfunding in Social Security in coming years as the baby boomer generation retires. He also noted that combat opera­tions in Iraq have ended and the U.S. will soon begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, which will reduce wartime imperative to pro­tect military pay and benefits.

Finally, the recent elections saw the defeat of many conservative Democrats who his­torically had pro­tected military ben­efits; they will be replaced by a freshman class less willing to put defense spending off­limits, Strobridge said.

“I don’t think there necessarily is an anti-defense sentiment, but there are people who believe budget concerns are so large it overcomes everything else,” Strobridge said.

But he noted that there could be far-reaching implications for some of the more radical proposals, such as the one that would overhaul the military retirement system to vest troops at 10 years of service, but make them wait until age 60 to begin drawing benefits.

That would hit especially hard for troops whose retired pay ended up being calculated using one or more of the years of frozen pay.

“If we had this system 10 years ago, we would not have a force today. Nobody would have stayed in after 10 years and faced deploy­ment after deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan,” he said.

“We have made radical cuts in retired pay before, and we have had to reverse them later when the implications became clear.




That is what will happen if we do this: Save now, pay later.” It may be small comfort for troops, but the commission also proposes to double the contribu­tion that federal civilians make into their retired pay and calcu­late their benefits based on their final five years of service rather than the current three years.

Discouraging Tricare use

Tricare fees for military retirees and active-duty families would rise under the draft proposals, but by how much is unclear. The com­mission assumes $6 billion in sav­ings by 2015, with half coming from requiring employers of work­ing-age military retirees to reim­burse the government if a retiree used Tricare rather than an employer-provided plan.

The report says premiums, deductibles and co-pays under Tri­care would increase to make up the additional $3 billion in savings, but it does not specify by how much; it says only that the increases would be “smaller” than under previous DoD proposals.

Increasing fees is aimed, in part, at reducing usage. The commis­sion says military families use health care at a higher rate than nonmilitary families, something that could be curtailed by raising the co-pay for office visits.

The commission also calls for shutting down the military’s state­side dependents’ school system, saving $1.1 billion by 2015.

Those schools, mostly in the South, are a legacy of the segrega­tion era and are no longer neces­sary, the commission said, sug­gesting that some could be turned over to local school districts, while in other locations students could shift to off-base schools.

Shutting down the DoD state­side school system is not a new idea — and it’s not popular with military families, said Kathy Moakler, director of government relations for the National Military Family Association.

“Military parents believe their children get a better education at these schools” than they would in the local public school districts, Moakler said. □

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