
Want to try and make a difference? Contact your representation in Congress and give them a piece of your mind.
I’ve told you about the sequestration. I’ve told you that the money in fact isn’t being cut from anywhere at all, instead it is a 2% reduction in the growth of the budget. The 85 Billion dollars sequestration takes from the budget this year still leaves the budget larger than the year before. America saw a two percent reduction in their budget on January 1st when the social security tax holiday ended and the tax went up, oh my gosh, two percent. Imagine that, you’ve survived haven’t you, did you make drastic cuts in your budget? I didn’t think so. There was no real threat to the economy, the Budget Control Act and the super committee failed and now it was time to spend a tiny bit less, but that wasn’t good enough for some high up in the government. No, if this sequestration went off without a bang, and no one was hurt by the “economic losses” then Americans might think, hey maybe the government can do with a little less.
But smaller government isn’t on the agenda; nanny states aren’t born out of small, well-managed governments. Some libtards have made the statement they want the cuts to be high-profile and to make them hurt so America is outraged and feels the pain. In fact the Washington Times reported on an email to an APHIS official said in part, “…So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.” Sounds like a contrived situation to me. Well America feels the pain, and the military is now taking the brunt, again.
Last week, “in an effort to curb spending” so the buzz words go, the Army and the Marines cut tuition assistance to their members, on Monday the Air Force and the Coast Guard followed suit, cutting all tuition assistance for the remainder of the fiscal year. If you check news stories someone has been trying to kill tuition assistance for the last four years, now they’ve finally succeeded and chances are it won’t return easily.
Tuition assistance in the military was never an entitlement, but it was a benefit that is used as a recruiting and a retention tool. Additionally, the military benefited from its own TA programs because the soldiers, sailors, and airmen who took advantage of the TA became smarter for the most part, and expanded their academic horizons. This in turn led to better informed decisions and the construction of real leaders, which the military has been struggling to develop from scratch. Now the military has effectively told their people they are no better than day laborers, they don’t want educated personnel, or not too educated anyway, and to just suck it up.
These are people who put their lives on the line for the good of the country and they can’t even get the same considerations that illegal aliens get? States like Colorado, California, and Massachusetts are lowering tuition for illegal immigrants and hoisting the bill on taxpayers, but our military is losing their tuition assistance, wow. So now we know what the government thinks of the people who defend it…worthless. The military won’t be given the same opportunity as a day laborer picked up on a street corner to do menial labor will be given for an education.
Non-partisan watchdogs have uncovered over $67 Billion in wasted spending that could be used to take care of 80% of the sequester but the government isn’t having it. Instead they are spending 1.5 million to research why lesbians are fat, have sent $250 million in aid to a hostile Egyptian government, will waste $36 B in military equipment in Afghanistan, and etc. This isn’t about cutting funds to save money, this is about cutting funds in the most public way to drive outrage and hurt the morale of the country.
Here is some food for thought to end on. With shrinking benefits, limited education opportunities, shifting health care, and an increased amount of danger and bodily harm how are you going to convince people to make a career in the military, how are you going to convince people to enlist in the first place. Very few people join the military out of a sense of altruism, most of them join for an exchange; pay, medical, education, and the like. What will you do when no one wants to serve anymore because your country offers nothing but scorn and insults while putting on a brave support the troops face.
The government has effectively told the military to get bent, how long before they just tell the country where to shove it and get out?