Read the names in the article. Remember who wants to shaft you..

I believe deep down in my heart, that anyone “VOTING” on military issues, must volunteer for a 15 month Deployment to IRAQ or AFGHANISTAN prior to being eligible to vote for us in the military.

Go have your entire unit deploy back to the United States after doing a 10 month deployment only to forget “YOU” over in IRAQ because your unit parted you out to another unit who needed a doc, but forgot to pick you up when it was time to leave.  Explain that to the MOM who is anxiously waiting at home.

Then, and only THEN vote on issues regarding taking some of our benefits away or paring them down.

Da-Chief

From NavyTimes

In a bullets-or-bonuses debate about financial pressures facing the Defense Department, service personnel chiefs ceded no ground to the competing needs for weapons modernization.

At a Nov. 17 forum sponsored by the Military Officers Association of America, the Army, Navy and Air Force personnel chiefs rejected the idea of a joint medical, legal and chaplain corps to save money on training and management, insist­ing on the continued need for ser­vice-specific training and duties.

And while they expressed a will­ingness to consider altering the military retirement system so that people don’t have to serve 20 years to earn some form of retire­ment benefit, they balked at the idea of doing so while the nation is at war.

“Let’s tread very carefully in this area while we are at war,” said Lt. Gen. Michael Rochelle, the Army’s personnel chief.

That could mean putting off change for some time. At the same forum, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs said he did not fore­see a quick end to conflict.

“The belief of the Joint Chiefs is, we are entering an era of persis­tent conflict,” said Marine Gen. James Cartwright, who warned of hot spots “broadly spread across the planet” that are “difficult to solve and move on.” On consolidating officers corps that appear to have common du­ties across the services, Lt. Gen. Richard Newton III, Air Force personnel chief, said he doesn’t see the need.

Rochelle and Vice Adm. Mark Ferguson, the chief of naval per­sonnel, agreed.

Cartwright described the issue facing the military as not just per­sonnel programs pitted against hardware, but a three-way bal­ancing act because of the contin­ued high operating costs of global deployments.

He did not talk about ways to cut personnel costs, but he said buying weapons systems that are adapt­able and have lesser support needs could reduce hardware and operat­ing costs. A prime example, he said, is unmanned aerial vehicles that can be used for a variety of missions, quickly adapted to new requirements and sent overseas with little or no ground support.

Ferguson said one reason that personnel costs are rising is that the military benefits package means the Defense Department now ranks among the top 50 em­ployers in the U.S.

Personnel costs are up 31 per­cent since 2001, he said.

Another panelist, Charles Abell, a former Pentagon person­nel chief who also served as staff director of the Senate Armed Ser­ vices Committee, has argued in the past about benefits being too generous, but he said the services cannot cut existing benefits, especially in wartime.

However, letting troops keep what they have does not mean giving them more. National eco­nomic problems could make re­cruiting and retention easier and reduce the need for new or ex­panded benefits, he said.