“Unsustainable”

We spend about $700 billion a year on our military budget, nearly doubling what that budget was pre-9/11. And military personnel, some of whom put their lives on the line, can retire after twenty years (at half pay), ramping up from there if the soldier remains in service thirty years or more. All those military folks (and their dependents) have healthcare coverage: “The Pentagon is providing health care coverage for 3.3 million active duty personnel and their dependents and 5.5 million retirees, eligible dependents and surviving spouses. Retirees outnumber the active duty, 2.3 million to 1.4 million.” HuffingtonPost.com, October 22nd.

Every time we engage in military action, having to raise troops for specific theaters of war (like Iraq or Afghanistan), soldiers injured in combat often are entitled to lifetime benefits, and retirees add to this unbelievable financial toll. “Combined with the billions in retirement pay, it's no surprise that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said personnel costs have put the Pentagon ‘on an unsustainable course.’… Yet the resistance to health care changes is fierce.” HuffingtonPost.

Budget pressures are pushing our members of Congress to take a long hard look at the vesting of such benefits and how little retirees have to pick up any of those costs. Might differentiate ex-soldiers with military disabilities, but for the rest, these costs are gigantic and seemingly never-ending. It is also an example of the hidden costs of military intervention and prolonged wars of questionable benefit to the American constituency.

But the handwriting is on the wall: “The 12-member, bipartisan [Congressional] supercommittee has a mandate to come up with at least $1.2 trillion in cuts by Nov. 23. If it fails to produce a plan or Congress rejects its proposal, automatic, across-the-board cuts of $1.2 trillion kick in, half of it from defense spending…. [Defense Secretary Leon] Panetta said $600 billion more in cuts over the next decade atop the $450 billion in cuts passed this summer would represent a ‘doomsday’ for the nation's military. Republicans and Democrats have echoed his apocalyptic warning. In their separate letters to the supercommittee, [Senators Carl] Levin [D-Michigan] and [John] McCain [R-Arizona] said they reject any deeper cuts in overall defense spending beyond the 10-year, $450 billion cuts.” HuffingtonPost.

The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars are mounting campaigns to defeat any Congressional attempt to reduce or limit either military retirement or medical benefits. They argue that people who knowingly are willing to put their lives on the line for their country deserve to be treated significantly better than civilians when it comes to these benefits. While this may be a compelling argument, even though most military personnel are never in harm’s way, the harsh reality is that we simply don’t have the money to afford such benefits anymore. And with longer-term prospects for economic growth dimming as education, infrastructure and research support from the government collapses, it is increasingly unlikely that the future generations that will be saddled with paying for these benefits will have the ability to earn enough to generate the required tax base to pay for them.

On reductions to the military’s TRICARE Prime program, proposals range from eligibility restrictions when the benefits kick in for both retirees and their dependents, to slightly increase the age qualification (absent disability) and to increase both the sign-up and annual fees, all of which may save an additional $111 billion over the next decade. Although I sound like a broken record, I’ve got another idea! How about reducing America’s percentage of global military expenditures from the present 44-47% down ratably over the next few years to 30%. 5% of the earth’s population should be safe and avoid “doomsday” with almost a third of every military dollar spent on the planet. Ya think?! We need to rethink the role of our military and how we deploy such masses of troops and military hardware from the ground up. That we haven’t really won a major war since WWII should tell you exactly how effective our expenditures in this area have been.

I’m Peter Dekom, and no governmental program reflects our living way beyond our means than our military, and the threats of doom that accompany talks of budgets cuts in this area are both nonsensical and extremely dangerous to our long-term ability to survive as a nation.