In spite of the cute toys marketed in conjunction with President Obama's boasting about 'getting bin-Laden', it's been obvious for some time that this president and many others around him neither understand nor appreciate our military, except when it's useful politically.
You might remember the use of dead military bodies being flown as a political photo-op in defiance of Department of Defense regulations,(not to mention common decency) Senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett famously ordering a decorated military officer to bring her a fresh drink at a White House soiree and the ongoing efforts by Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama Department of Justice to deliberately disenfranchise military votes during the 2010 midterms in a clear violation of the MOVE Act passed by Congress....and there are many more examples I could site.
The latest attack on our military by President Obama is an attempt to slash their health benefits.
The president tried this once before, in a scheme that would have seen wounded combat veterans cut off from VA benefits and being forced to take out their own private insurance to get treatment, but the outcry from groups like the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the American Legion and polling data that showed that Americans overwhelmingly disapproved made him back off.
Now, he's brought it back again in his new defense budget, which calls for slashing benefits from VA. specifically from a program many vets depend on called TriCare.
This is part of the massive cuts in defense the Obama Administration is demanding . Under the Obama plan, the main targets would be under-65 and Medicare-eligible military retirees through a tiered increase in annual Tricare premiums that will be based on yearly retirement pay:
Significantly, the plan calls for increases between 30 percent to 78 percent in Tricare annual premiums for the first year. After that, the plan will impose five-year increases ranging from 94 percent to 345 percent—more than 3 times current levels.
According to congressional assessments, a retired Army colonel with a family currently paying $460 a year for health care will pay $2,048.
The new plan hits active duty personnel by increasing co-payments for pharmaceuticals and eliminating incentives for using generic drugs.
The changes are worrying some in the Pentagon who fear it will severely impact efforts to recruit and maintain a high-quality all-volunteer military force. Such benefits have been a key tool for recruiting qualified people and keeping them in uniform.
“Would you stay with a car insurance company that raised your premiums by 345 percent in five years? Probably not,” said the congressional aide. “Would anybody accept their taxes being raised 345 percent in five years? Probably not.”
A second congressional aide said the administration’s approach to the cuts shows a double standard that hurts the military.
“We all recognize that we are in a time of austerity,” this aide said. “But defense has made up to this point 50 percent of deficit reduction cuts that we agreed to, but is only 20 percent of the budget.”
The administration is asking troops to get by without the equipment and force levels needed for global missions. “And now they are going to them again and asking them to pay more for their health care when you’ve held the civilian workforce at DoD and across the federal government virtually harmless in all of these cuts. And it just doesn’t seem fair,” the second aide said.{...}
Additionally, the critics said leaving civilian workers’ benefits unchanged while hitting the military reflect the administration’s effort to court labor unions, as government unions are the only segment of organized labor that has increased in recent years.
As part of the increased healthcare costs, the Pentagon also will impose an annual fee for a program called Tricare for Life, a new program that all military retirees automatically must join at age 65. Currently, to enroll in Tricare for Life, retirees pay the equivalent of a monthly Medicare premium.
Under the proposed Pentagon plan, retirees will be hit with an additional annual enrollment fee on top of the monthly premium.
Union votes that vote Democrat as opposed to military who predominantly vote Republican? When it comes to this president deciding whose benefits to slash, it's no contest.
It will be interesting to see how Congress deals with this.
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