Getting the Priorities Straight

North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Syria, and all of those other pesky little groups of people that keep bombing things that usually have innocent people in them.

So am I...

There is a difference between a gov. pension and a military one. I am all for the military. I do not believe gov. worker pensions should be awarded after 20 years of work. However, you said "government," not "military." There is a huge difference in those pensions and regulations.

As far as the military size, just think back to what happened after WWII.

The US Army was reduced in size, training was a misnomer and Truman was trying to get rid of the Marines. Then the NKPA attacked South Korea. The US Army was driven back to a perimeter of about 30 miles from Pusan, the last city in S. Korea on the coast that had a reasonable anchorage. The US Army held on as best they could and the US Marines were sent in to help. Equipment was sadly out of date and not much of it was available, ammunition was in short supply and leadership was abysmal. It took the Marines to tighten things up and come up with a decent defense and then offense. Then MacArthur, that idiot, screwed up the whole "police action" royally. Of course, Truman wasn't exempt from that.

Yes, we need to get rid of the dross. But we also need to keep our armed forces in fighting form.

Hey maybe all the ones in favor of reducing the armed forces can pack up and leave the country, therefore reducing the services we have to give them.
I am sure in the long run this would help reduce the burden upon those that actually contribute to mankind here in the US OF A.

Oooo, the ol' "love it or leave it" screed... That's sooooo 60's....

Yup get them dirty Hippies OUTA here.

Yep, and you know, I was against unnecessary wars and hawk/neocon war-mongers back in the 60's too..

JFK and Johnson were hawk/neocon war-mongers?

That love and peace thing.


Peace through Superior FirePower!

LadyJazzer wrote: Cut the military in half?; cut the unnecessary boondoggles to create weapons systems the military even says it doesn't need?; Stop fighting unnecessary "designer" wars for the neocons?; Close all the unnecessary bases, here and abroad?; bring most of the troops home and stop wrapping yourselves in flags pretending that every encounter is somehow "keeping us safe" and "ensuring our freedom"?

Wow, that would cut the spending in half!

Let's see here. 2010 DoD budget was roughly $680 billion, half of which would be $340 Billion. Budget for 2010 was somewhere around $3.6 Trillion with a deficit for 2010 was somewhere around $1.3 Trillion. Wow, cutting the DoD budget in half would not only not cut the federal budget in half, it wouldn't even eliminate half of the deficit spending. You can hear the surprise in my voice that the typical progressive hyperbole is long on outrage and short on facts yet again.

With regards to the original topic, JH you are switching gears faster than I can keep up. You start with the funding for state worker pensions and then go to federal pensions and then onto military pensions. The disaster of $4 Trillion worth of unfunded liabilities for the various state worker pensions is nothing more than the result of allowing unionization and collective bargaining within the public work force. When you can contribute 10% of your salary for 25-40 years and collect 60%-80% of the average of your final 3 years for 10-30 years after you retire, there is no possible way that those numbers will ever have a prayer of balancing. Same for the overly generous federal pension plans funded with the taxpayer revenue that are similarly based. I don't care what the state workers were promised in their collective bargaining agreements, the pensions will have to be reduced to something that approaches a logical amount. Think the airline union workers are getting their promised pensions? How about the folks from Qwest, or Enron. When the public worker pension payments cannot be sustained without significant tax increases being levied to fund them, they have to be cut to reasonable levels, perhaps to the levels that are on parity with the current Social Security benefits.

If your pension is a military pension, you might not be eligible for Medicare, but you, and your wife if I am not mistaken, should qualify for VA medical benefits after your 20 years of service as an alternative to Medicare.

Federal workers do pay into the Social Security Ponzi, which IIRC started under Reagan in 1984. If a federal worker started their career before then, then they do not have to contribute to the Social Security Ponzi that the rest of us, and our employers, get to pay the tax on for the privilege of being employed or having employees.

Military pensions, IMNTBHO, should not be reduced. Military pay is not even close to being in parity, even allowing for the base housing and other benefits, with any other private or public sector job.