Skip to main content

Paul Ryan defends screwing over military veterans

Here's Paul Ryan commenting on the largest military budget on the planet, and how it needs to be secured on the backs of those who served in the military by recouping $6 billion from their retirement pay COLAs:
"We give them a slightly smaller adjustment for inflation because they're still in their working years and in most cases earning another paycheck,” Ryan said. "Our goal here is to make sure that no other country comes close to matching the U.S. military, and the stress on the budget in the future brings that whole entire notion into question. We still have a Pentagon budget that is not where it needs to be."
 Now let's get this straight, Paul.  The United States traditionally does almost 50% of all the military spending done on the entire planet.  As you can see by the chart below, the only element that even approaches our scale of military spending is our NATO allies--and if we are concerned with protecting ourselves from Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, etc., then we all might as well start stocking up on the cyanide pills.
What's even worse is that those peripatetic old men at the Pentagon not only agreed with this, but suggested that Ryan and his cohorts look to cutting military benefits: 
"The defense community asked us to look at compensation and their entitlement spending within the Pentagon. We knew we couldn't put back into the Pentagon's budget as much as we'd like to, and these reforms help them with their budget," said Ryan. "The savings stays with the Department of Defense and that comes on top of the money we're giving back through the sequester."
The savings "can go to anything," said Ryan. "It can go to readiness, it can go to troops, it can go to brigades, buying equipment."
It is typical of the current military and Congressional leadership to count the retirement benefits of military personnel as "entitlement spending."

Thanks, Paul Ryan, for proving once again that government promises aren't worth the paper they're printed on.


Comments

Hube said…
Nothing infuriates me more than cutting bennies from those who have served. Like there isn't anywhere ELSE in the bloated military budget that could be cut.

Disgusting.
December 16, 2013 at 12:42 PM
delacrat said…
served ? Served who ?
December 16, 2013 at 6:31 PM
NCSDad said…
Did they put the retirement terms in writing? Std pensions are not like real money. Perhaps military retirement should be 401k style.
December 16, 2013 at 10:05 PM
Anonymous said…
@delacrat served American troll. The military is the only reason you have freedom.
December 18, 2013 at 10:04 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...
44 comments
Read more

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...
70 comments
Read more

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...
31 comments
Read more