]Reject Military Retirement COLA Cuts

[Runt]

Reject Military Retirement COLA Cuts


The proposed Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013 aims to provide budget stability and help ease the harmful effects of sequestration on the defense budget. However, one provision within the bill would penalize current and future military members who have served our nation for over twenty years. Specifically, it cuts the annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for uniformed service retirees by 1 percent a year until age 62.

The cuts will have a devastating and long-lasting impact. By age 62, retirees who serve a 20 year career would lose nearly 20 percent of their retired pay. An E-7 retiring at age 40 today would experience a loss of $83,000 in purchasing power - an O-5 would lose $124,000.

The MOAA web site has a link to send your Senators and the President a letter asking to remove this proposed cut to military benefits. Please take the time to check it out, write to your representatives in Washington and share this with your friends.

[url]http://www.moaa.org/[/url

[rich76]

Not to mention it funds oblamercare, increases deficits etc etc blah blah blah. republicans are no better than demorats and the continuous assault on our liberties and freedoms as wells as the pussification of our military.....and the icing on the cake........this nonsense. Why, on earth, are they kicking the volunteer military in the teeth like this? It is a national disgrace.

[Runt]

I agree Rich. I spent 26 years in the Navy, all of them voluntarily. I have no regrets or complaints about my service time. I willingly traded my (and my family's) liberties, holidays, birthdays and general family time for what I believed was an acceptable inflation-adjusted retirement plan, competent healthcare, some education benefits and a burial with military honors.

I held up my end of the bargain. Sadly, our government seems intent to drop its end of that bargain. My health care, since retirement, is spotty but the education benefits are wonderful. The keystone to my benefits package is my retired pay. I haven't seen much in the way of COLA since 2008 and am now facing losing the bulk of future COLAs until I reach age 62. I face the real probability of losing 10 percent of my buying power. So my retired pay get devalued by 10 percent as I enter retirement age and has no means for me to catch up! I will be behind the inflation curve for the rest of my life.

What I find most unacceptable is that current federal (Civil Service) employees and retired personnel are not impacted in the same manner. Only new hires come under the proposed COLA reductions. Go figure. The good folks working today at the IRS, Department of State and the Department of Health and Human Services - that are doing such a great job for our taxpayers - aren't impacted by the proposed COLA reduction. It is just the poor saps that went to work today wearing Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps uniforms that suffer the consequences of our unbalanced budget.