What so you think??

I have just turned the TV off, trying to get my composure. I listened to the speech about military cutbacks, and again our service man and there families are asked to make another sacrifice. Now they want to cut back on housing allowances, pay for officers, and the one thing that affects us all the commissary. The biggest cut of all will be the cutting back on our forces to the preworld war II size. I don't want to get into this anymore than necessary, because I am upset to see the military being used as a cash cow so they don't need to touch other programs. All I can say China, Russia and some of the countries in the middle east must be happy.

AMEN I feel the same way the military seems to take the hit all the time when they want to cut spending
but they sure don't want to cut anything they like

We were in Lassen Park when congress closed down a few parts of the government to "make a dumb statement" ... and then spent ONE night voting to pay everyone, including themselves, after a year of failing to pass a working budget.

Not one politician in office when that happened will get my vote this time.

The first one that will get my vote, the one that says "We're gonna make across the board cut, a little bit from everyone, including Congress salaries and all the office support, travel and junk extra the Congress gets now.

That' how to fix a budget, not picking a choosing who to hurt. And, eliminating waste spending -- we know, we've been there - all of us who spent time in uniform. We've all seen the dumbest waste right with our own eyes ...

One question that always sticks in my craw - and an example of waste that we all see. Hired police in civilian uniforms at the gates. We already have men and women in uniform, trained to protect our base access. So, instead of using those men and women, we hire a civilian police service for probably twice the salary, and then (probably) reduce the active 'ready forces' ... that makes absolutely no sense at all to me ...

And, no validity to the "different training" that civilian police gets. I look at some of these 'retired police' guarding our gates and know without a doubt, it would be fruitless for many of them to even attempt any kind of physical protection of gate access. The majority would have a tough time holding up the radio long enough to call it in - We need capable soldiers at our gates, not retired Pillsbury muffins.

If we had soldiers doing what they're trained to do - protect our bases, then we would reduce the budget AND continue solid OJT as well. And, remember, beside the gate personnel, we have all the supervisors and maintenance which adds more cost. IF we send our soldiers, we already have all that support in place, thus reducing the costs even more.

Another Amen here. I especially agree with the civilian "police" guarding our gates. We have stopped staying at FT Measde, because I feel there security is so lax. I have so many instances, I don't have the time to go into. Thanks for reminding me of the wasteful spending that goes into not protecting our base.

I just read on Military.com that they are now looking at raising Tri-care an medication cost.

If they are so bad off why do we still have the Blue Angels an other special units out there???

They are cutting the troop strength so they must not be worried about recruiting new people...

There are so many other ways to save money, but no one wants to look at them..

monkey44 wrote: The first one that will get my vote, the one that says "We're gonna make across the board cut, a little bit from everyone, including Congress salaries and all the office support, travel and junk extra the Congress gets now.

I couldn't agree more. Across the board cuts and also weed out the fraud, waste and abuse. We all need to do our part.