Congress Still Refuses to Pay Our Military Veterans

Congress Still Refuses to Pay Our Military Veterans

Congress Has Slashed Veteran’s Pensions to Save Money;  Why Not Theirs Too?

Daily Sanity is an online publication of Conservative-Daily.com.  The article “Congress Still Refuses to Pay Our Military Veterans” has been authored by Joe Otto and posted online on February 03, 2014.  Portions of that article are presented here in the following column and commented on.



I am not a personal friend of Joe Otto, but after reading his article, mentioned above, I have become a great admirer of his style and patriotism. His loyalty to the United States and to its military branches is another reason for my praise for him.  I hope he understands that I have no intention of co-opting his writing or trying to upstage him in any way.

His title, “Congress Still Refuses to Pay Our Military Veterans” was eye catching during my morning perusal of the news for the day; after of course, the Super Bowl run-down which was also a large put-down for Mr. Peyton Manning of the Denver Broncos, who many thought (but not me) that he would hand the Seattle Seahawks a good “whuppin”.  This game proves he is a very over-rated football player.

But in addition to the game,  Mr. Otto reminds us that our military withstands some severe travails and sacrifices which can be permanently devastating. The federal government does not dole out pension funds on a case by case basis, giving excessive amounts to certain veterans who withstood inordinately large periods of stress and actual bodily suffering with loss of limbs and sight, and smaller amounts for those who saw little or even no actual combat or severe hardships.



The rewarding retirement thank-yous to the veterans are no different in their justifications than are the formulae for retiring Congress-people who have been pampered and schmoozed by the fawning public as well as themselves, who in fact make up their own rules and formulas as they go along in office.

Veterans can’t write their own set of rules for retirement compensation, so those that do, Congress-people, are the first ones who decide that veterans do not do ENOUGH for the country to warrant the—apparently to the Congress—EXCESSIVE amounts of taxpayer dollars as they, the Congress-people do. And, of course, in their complicit minds there are others who are more worthy of heavy pension funds, such as socialist union members and excessive increases to the minimum wage earners, unemployed food stamp-welfare class, and as Mr. Otto reminds us, the financial benefits for millions of illegals, what he calls ‘immigrants’ and I dub, ‘aliens’.

In case you’ve forgotten, this “Dump on Veterans” fiasco started Mr. Otto informs us “Back in December, as part of the Ryan-Murray budget deal, Congress agreed to slash military pensions by 1 percent every year .. to save $6. billion over a decade.”

I wonder if anyone ever calculated how much could be saved if congressional salaries were slashed by FIFTY percent and with the added benefit to those pols of making them more realistic citizen legislators as our forebears had envisioned in the seventeen-hundreds for them to be.

Otto continues, “One percent may seem like an insignificant number, but over the course of an individual’s retirement it can translate into thousands of dollars.”

So, our federal legislators, by slashing the retirements of the military who risked their lives for our country and those very same legislators, will not have to sacrifice their own opulent and comfy lifestyles or their million-dollar bank accounts.  What a bunch of disingenuous and phony self-styled patriots we have,  thanks to our own votes.

Again Mr. Otto reminds us, “Think about all the money that Democrats spend to pander to their supporters.  The unions and illegal immigrants all get their “fair share” but there never seems to be anything left over for our military veterans.  In fact, the Democrats always seem to be trying to balance the budget on our veterans’ backs.  That is unacceptable.”

Perhaps it might be that so few bureaucrats are also veterans.

“Please take a few minutes to tell Congress that it is time to restore our military veterans’ pensions.  Our servicemen and women are not bargaining chips.  They are the heroes that sustain our great Constitutional Republic, and it is time to start treating them that way.”

I couldn’t say it any better, Mr. Otto.