C. - posted on 12/07/2010 ( 170 moms have responded )
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Ok, so a friend of mine posted something about how people keep complaining that Obama wants to freeze military pay for three years and continued to say that they should stop complaining and that military members are not any more special than the rest of us (even though they risk their lives on the daily..) And she's the fiancee of a soldier (but she is from the UK, so maybe she doesn't understand all the things we really have to pay for b/c she's not the one that gets the bills?)
Freezing military pay would include:
Less housing allowance and less retirement pay.. And if I remember correctly, cutting down on the 'tax-free' things (like Commissaries and BX/PXs- Even though we already have to pay a surcharge for shopping there- at least we do here in Hawaii, so it's not really 'tax-free', we just pay a LITTLE less).
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/11/mi...
Also, we have to pay a yearly rate for TRICARE (less than other insurance, I suppose, but it certainly isn't free contrary to popular belief) and have to pay co-pays if you go off-base/post, which isn't always cheap. We get housing allowance (where you are stationed depends on how much you get- like in Hawaii you get more b/c the cost of living is so high.) And next year we are going to have to pay for all the extra water and electricity we have to use (they give us x-amount and have the houses on meters and if we go over each month, we have to pay-- Which I don't have a problem with b/c there are so many families that overuse and leave lights on when nobody is in the room, A/C on when it doesn't need to be, leave the water running when no one is using it.. And it costs housing a butt-load.) But again, contrary to popular belief, we do not get a 'free ride'. Things still come out of our pay.
My thing is, our military is going overseas to protect our country.. Why shouldn't we (military families and single soldiers alike) get certain compensation for it?
There are so many other ways they could cut costs that don't include taking away from the families that risk their lives everyday (even when they aren't deployed, their jobs are still dangerous).
For one thing, there are SO MANY families on Welfare, Food Stamps and Medicaid that DON'T NEED TO BE. IE: They're lying in the application process saying they can't work, but yet have at least 1 or 2 jobs just b/c they want the extra benefits and are greedy for money (and YES, there really are people that work the system like that!!!) It sickens me. AND publicity stunts that cost our government more than $300k.. Whose money went towards that?? The taxpayer's! That money could have gone toward some of our debt instead!
Anyway, I'll write more later. It's almost 0230 and I still need to shower and get to bed.
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