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No way will this ever get approved, but the hypocrisy of Congress seems to know no limits. Let's look at the difference between Congress's plan versus the proposed military plan: -At 50, both can 'retire', but the military guy has to wait 7 more years for a paycheck. -The military paycheck is computed off the last five years; the Congressman's off the last three years. -In the military, if you serve for six years and get out, you might get a 'thank you'. In Congress, you get 9% of your pay as retirement. -The retirement check of a Congressman is nearly twice as much as a retired O-5 gets. If they're going to play the whole 'times are rough, everyone needs to tighten their belts' line, they should lead by example.

In my current job, our retirement pension is something that we constantly have to defend because it is usually the first thing brought up for proposed cuts when times are tight. Even though I am a republican, I am thankful for the union when jobs and pensionz are on the line. Similar to this situation, smarter heads will prevail and all will be safe.

The reason a "DG" is important is very common: 90% of officers (pilots) are equal in piloting ability. It's the OTHER stuff you do that gets you stratified amongst your peers. Everytime you are in a group, you are competing for stratification--be it at ASBC or in the squadron. You belong to the group of "copilots", or "wingmen", or "tactics cell", or "training shop", or "SELO" or "SDO", or even SNACKO. Makes no difference. Your SQ/DO and CC are looking for ways to tell you people APART. Why is chucklehead X better or worse than chucklehead Y? They both got Q1's on their checkrides and didn't screw up on their first deployment and are progressing normally through upgrade. How do I tell them apart? The answer comes in all the OTHER stuff you do to enhance my unit's effectiveness: administrative excellence/morale booster/unique program management/inspection preparation, etc...that's what the CC needs help with--UPT and IQT do a good job of making you a good technician with an OK skill set, and our training shop has a program to get you up to speed on the mission...so since you're all equal in those regards, I need to know what ELSE you bring to the table to differentiate you from all the others... ANYTIME you get a chance to distinguish yourself from your peers (by getting a DG, Top 1/3, #1/3 Asst execs, etc) this helps BOTH the CC decide who to go to bat for (early upgrades/choice PCS/another flying gig) and who to send on less desireable assignments, or even to approve the bonus $$ for. Works in reverse too--the copilot who gets two DUIs in a week probably wont get to go to SOS in-residence...Know the rules of the game you're playing. Blow off ASBC and you lose a chance, perhaps five/ten years from now, to attend WIC, or go in-res to ACSC- because the dude you're competing against THEN got the DG from ASBC, and that became the CC's deciding factor on who to send. It happens. Since you don't KNOW for a FACT you're separating at the end of your commitment, or you're on track for CoS, might as well learn early the rules of the game your playing, and do everything possible to set yourself up to be a contender for WHATEVER job/career goal/aspiration you have. Get off course, even a little, and your decision maybe gets made for you and you lose options. Whether you want to be a SQ/CC or a terminal iron Major with 25,000 flying hours, or separate ASAP, you should probably try to garner the same distinctions every chance you get. You'll either make your goal and be a CC, or make your goal and turn down Lt Col, or make your unit CC cry when you separate. But the key is, it was YOUR CHOICE every time. Fail to follow the rules, and you don't get to choose. Its your life and career--work it any way you want. /off soapbox...again...

You know it! Though I have yet to buy some man-capri-pants or get a purse...I mean satchel. If people don't want to be subjected to airport security: 1. Don't fly, thus avoiding all this or 2. Reduce security but increase your personal comfort, thus while accepting the increase in threat from people who want to do bad things. It was my understanding that the new scanners are a response to situations like the underwear-bomber. Just as we started going shoe-less after the shoe bomber. (what's next on the explosive attire list?) If you don't want to go through the scanner, then you get the new and improved TSA frisk. If you refuse that, well what then? Should they just take your word that you're a good guy? Is there other technology out there that can get the same job done? What happened to the puffers? *note: after watching news clips on this subject to me it seems that the people that are complaining the most about the scanners were either: A) obese B) had fake tits

Really? Choke yourself.

Ugh...can we leave the conspiracy theories for people wearing tin-foil hats? The reason your internet skillz have failed you is because this particular proposal on military pensions is from the Domenici-Rivlin "Restoring America's Future" plan, as commissioned by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a bipartisan think tank. Read an op-ed authored by Domenici and Rivlin in the Washington Post here, and a story from military.com specifically about proposed changes to military retirement and tricare here. Overall, their plan marries up closely to what was proposed by the 2008 Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation, proposals that were entirely ignored by Congress. This is not a conspiracy...this as well as the President's debt commission (Simpson-Bowles) are attempts at bipartisan brainstorming at how to help reduce our national debt. Will these proposals pass Congress, we'll see but considering both sides have identified things in each proposal that are red lines for them I'm not holding my breath. Ok mr employee, I'm game. Is suggesting that people with truly dangerous careers should receive more benefits (i.e. they have "earned" more by actually being away from their families, being shot at, injured, etc.) than those sitting desk jobs so crazy? Ok, sounds good to me. I never claimed to be working the "hardest" job or the most "dangerous" job, but does flying in combat zones and frequently deploying sound harder and more dangerous than working the MPF? Yes. Does spending 15+ months at some sh*tty FOB getting shot at and seeing your buddies get killed sound harder and more dangerous than my job? Yes again. So...I'm not really sure what you're insinuating. I'm gonna assume you're a pilot and you have deployed several times since 9/11, is that fair? I'd say you've probably earned benefits similar to me and most of the guys on here, so I'm confused as to why the stereotypical "shoe clerk" (my Amn Joeblow from before) should earn as many retirement benefits under a revised retirement system. In my view, they should not if the reason we're giving such a generous retirement plan to military personnel is because they have "earned" it. If that's the case let's make it more generous for the people actually busting their ass and less so for people wondering how long they can sit in the food court of the BX before they have to get back to their cubicle. See post by Chicken. I honestly wasn't full-up on what Congressional pensions are based on, but I would have guessed it'd be similar to other civilian federal workers. That seems to be true based on what Chicken says so there ya go. Look it up yourself and if it seems unfair write your congressman/senators and next election only vote for candidates who support reducing congressional pensions if it's that important to you. I love on these emotional issues it's fine to cut stuff as long as it doesn't affect you directly. For that reason, you won't see Congress voting themselves less money or retirement benefits because if you allowed members of the military to vote for their own pay and benefits, do you think we would lower them as some great gesture to a nation straddled with unmanageable debt? Hellz no. Luckily for us Congress is ~535 members large, so their retirement benefits really have no effect on the deficit. And honestly neither do military pensions either so really, don't sweat it because this issue is not only political poison for anyone who even mentions potential reform, but it's also a drop in the bucket if we're really trying to lower the deficit. Arg...for all the calls to "Read the bill!!" it seems like no one actually did. If you can find in the bill where healthcare was supposed to be free I'll buy ya a beer. Name me a government program that's truly "free" and I'll call you an idiot. We pay taxes to support social security and medicare and every other government program out there. And "Obamacare" isn't really a government-run program anyways, it's a requirement that you buy private-market health insurance and a set of guidelines on what those programs need to include at minimum. If this were a single-payer system, yes, you'd be getting healthcare from the government...kinda like you do now under tricare. Unfortunately IMHO, that kind of system isn't sustainable on a grand scale unless you raise taxes in the short term to pay for the initial costs and it would have totally re-made the employer-based system we have now which insurance companies would not have been happy about. Ahh...whatever, this is completely off topic... To the point pawnman was trying to make, IDK if you would be immediately eligible for tricare if we changed the system as Domenici-Rivlin propose. The military.com article I linked to above highlights the plan's proposals WRT raising fees for tricare to cover more costs (i.e. when tricare started member fees paid for 27% of the program, now it's down to 11% b/c we haven't raised fees once since 1995). Honestly, it probably wouldn't matter much deficit-wise to allow retirees to keep tricare upon getting out a @ 20 years b/c the majority of people aged ~38 are not costing a lot for healthcare. Healthcare costs for old people is what's gonna bite us in the ass.

Um, yes, it should be based on something quantifiable if we're saying that retirement in the military is based on having "earned" it when compared to other federal workers. If we're not saying that, then I'm not sure our desk jockeys should be getting more than the desk jockeys at State, Justice, FBI, etc. Using AFSCs is an easy, broad-brush stroke way to do it and that's why there are retention bonuses for certain jobs and not others; we do this all the time with special pays and retention bonuses, yet when I try to apply it to retirement pay it's suddenly controversial and divisive because not everyone will get to "win" to the same degree after punching the clock for 20 years... I'm not saying "I have all the answers, elect me emperor-for-life," I'm saying that this is a good conversation to have so that if/when changes comes we have a plan to pull off the shelf that is to our benefit. I don't think you're picking on me...I really don't even think we completely disagree based on your views on turning desk jobs into GS positions. If no one in the military proposes these kinds of changes, then the starting point of the conversation will be based on what someone else cooks up, is that a better solution? If no one is willing to even think up bold, controversial new ideas about how to make our system better then what's the point? Pay that gives greater benefits to those who have "earned" them by undertaking hazardous duties that are essential to military operations. Why not incentivise retirement benefits in the same way that we do regular pay? If you fly and are deployed in combat, you earn more than the guy who doesn't when on active duty, but once you retire his "earned" benefits are the same as yours?? That does not compute.

So under one theoretical option, you rely more on individual contributions and give the greatest long-term benefits to those who have given the most to the service. If you take the personal responsibility to save your own money and sacrifice the most, you will benefit the most; if you sit on your ass you benefit less. The other option is one where everyone wins equally, and the government begins giving out "retirement" benefits immediately to people as young as 38. Which one of those sounds like a liberal, big-government, status quo option? Guess all those people who wanted to reform the system, stop wasteful spending, and introduce market-based solutions to big government programs were really full of crap. The system as it stands now is great for us and I look forward to hopefully benefiting from it some day, but is it really the best, fairest, most efficient system that puts money in the hands of those who deserve it most? That's a legit question. It doesn't seem like they called for any changes in the timing of tricare benefits.

Oh yea, the part where I favor people contributing more, the government spending less, and those who deserve more getting more than relative freeloaders, yea, that's liberal BS. If you don't like me, fine, but this isn't a liberal proposal...it's been offered by several bipartisan and non-partisan commissions for years. Whatever, this is clearly a no-win when everyone else seems to be close-minded and retreating to their corner and throwing bombs at anyone who's trying to take their money. I get it. Yeaa..right, it's a hell of a "retainer" then. How many people have gotten non-vol'd back to active duty this way again?? So it's a legit strategy to pay people more for doing dangerous/valuable jobs while they're on active duty but once we hit retirement, excuse me, "retainer"-age, then we're all equally valuable. If retirement isn't based on what you do while you're on active duty, why do we get so much more than civilian federal workers? I thought we "earned" our benefits, but as long as what we do on active duty doesn't matter then it's pretty hard to justify such a good deal. I'm arguing the exact opposite; a lot of military members really do sacrifice in their active duty jobs and they should get great benefits. That desk jockey at the MPF/medical/etc. that's never deployed, however, is probably not among them. Yes, the troll that is making the same argument as DOD studies. Is this really a partisan issue and you just hate me because I'm a liberal? I really don't think this is a red/blue dividing line. BL: You don't like this conversation, tough sh*t. This issue will come up periodically and if we in the military aren't thinking about ways to improve our system, one day it will all go away once the calls for radical cuts go far enough. If the tea partiers get their way DOD will not be immune to the bloodletting...