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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
Just so we all understand the dimensions of what we're talking about here, the amount the government contributes to military retirement benefits has tripled since 2000. The pension contribution is now larger than the actual military payroll. The amount that the Pentagon contributes to fund military pensions is dramatically higher than similar funding by private sector employers. Pension contributions as a percentage of payroll by private companies was about 7% in 2010. In the same year, the Pentagon contributed 136% of it's actual payroll into retirement benefit funding. The contributions by the Pentagon to military retirement benefits is now about 1/7 of the entire military budget, and growing at a dramatic rate.
Do we have a problem with military pensions that needs to be addressed? You betcha'. Will the problem be politicized by the two political parties? You betcha'. Will anything actually be done to alleviate the problem? Almost certainly not.
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VK, while I believe you are wrong on some of the details, you are right that benefit costs have spiraled out of control. This is not just a problem for military benefits, but all government benefits. It is going to take real courage on the part of our leaders to face this problem. To date they have not. In every election we have heard that the bad old meanies of the other party want to take away social security, Medicare, veteran’s benefits, civil servant retirement benefits, etc. This has been an effective campaign strategy but one that resulted in election by lying.
As you point out, private pension costs are a small fraction of payroll when compared to military pension costs. The same is true when you examine civil service pension costs. To come to grips with out problem we must do a series of things: (1) Put all new military and civil service personnel on a defined contribution rather than a defined benefit plan – the plan for the military needs to be richer because of the nature of the work involved; (2) Restrict access to VA health care to those actually injured in their service and have no other coverage available; we geezers get Medicare and those that were not injured can compete in the workforce like anyone else – this would allow us to close the VA health system; (3) Restrict cola increases for civil service and military retirees –my pension does not increase just because the cost of living goes up and neither should theirs; (4) Means test Medicare and charge more for those who make more; (5) Freeze all civil service pay until the average corresponds to the average pay in the private sector; (6) Bring civil Service benefits in line with private sector benefits (25 days vacation after one year of service! You have to be kidding); (7) Place elected and appointed personnel on the same retirement and benefit schedule as Civil Service employees.
IMHO, far too many will reply, “But that was promised to me!” The simple fact is that our mouths wrote checks that our bank accounts cannot cover. We can blame this on the rich, the Republicans, the Democrats, the Tea Party, the WSJ demonstrators, Bush, Obama, etc. It does not matter how we got here, the simple fact is we are here and must take an ax to ALL the benefit programs before they destroy us.