WKRN reports:
Quietly the Pentagon sponsored a study to look at budget cuts. What they found is the military pension plan is costing the country billions of dollars a year. The study said the U.S. could save $250 billion over 20 years if the military went to the traditional 401k plan of an average working American.
Most military personnel argue the average American does not risk their life for country and the billions of dollars spent on their pension plans are worth it.
“Soldiers are constantly reevaluating whether or not the sacrifice is worth it—the years away from their families, the risk to life and limb, the disruption of your life on an almost daily basis,” Mackler said.
Mackler believes the current pension plan helps retain personnel and create an experienced senior leadership.
“A soldier, particularly a soldier in combat, needs to be concerned about mission performance not portfolio performance,” Mackler said. “They need to know that their families will be taken care of.”
If this is true (and Panetta has confirmed that it is) it’s a disgrace. The Obama administration has gone to bat for Big Labor and government unions in Wisconsin precisely to preserve their lavish benefits derived largely from cushy pencil-pusher jobs. Military members at the lowest ranks typically live close to the poverty line unless they’re earning hazard pay, and they earn that by putting their lives on the line in combat zones overseas. The idea that the Pentagon would break its promise to them, especially while unionized government bureaucrats remain under the protection of SEIU-owned Obama, ought to be unthinkable.
And it’s all terribly ironic. When President George W. Bush proposed privatizing a tiny part of Social Security, the left went nuts and hammered at him and the plan until it died. Now, a left wing president is proposing privatizing the entire military pension system? Are they acknowledging that they were wrong then, or that they don’t care about the military now? Or both?
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