In other words, take away the only two benefits remaining for those of us who served.

Wonderful.

At least they're including contractors in the mix, for a change. It's not just civil service and acdu personnel...

or retiring vets.

Bureaucracy begets bureaucracy.

If you hire a vet, their time working for the government as a civilian is added to their military service and becomes part/parcel of their pension package. The contractors get more money up front, and none downstream, and they can be dumped on a moment's notice. It's much harder to dump a career civil servant.

I think there needs to be independent "desk audits" of every damn job (and that includes the Big Wigs, the top management tiers) associated with government. Not just contractor positions, but civil service ones as well. The military does this every so often, as they adjust end strength to meet operational requirements, and they will probably need to keep tweaking their billet allocations as we continue with this latest drawdown.

So much money goes to waste, and in many cases, the bean counters can't figure out where the hell the money went even when they go back and try to audit the process.

If you are a vet and qualify for a civil service job and get through the hiring process, you may buy the years spent in military service and apply that time toward the total of years necessary to qualify for retirement. It is not a freebie.

Most new vet hires are under the FERS program and are not under the older civil service pension program which was changed after Regan "saved social security" back in 1985.

Those who were hired under civil service pre-1985 have retired for the most part.

ends up getting a retirement "leg up" over those entering civil service from the civilian sector. S/He does less work over the course of a career in civil service for a larger pension that the nonvet gets. That same vet, had he not entered civil service, wouldn't be getting a dime from the government unless he or she had retired from the military.

So it does end up costing the USG more. A contractor is hired, paid for the time they work, and dumped with no further obligation or association with the government.

That's how it is supposed to work, in practice. The problem comes when Congress buys stock in some of these contracting businesses and have an interest in writing them lucrative contracts that keep them stuck to the ship of state like a fervent barnacle. In those instances, these "temporary" contractors can make money hand over fist for many years and, if they're fiscally prudent, can end up doing very well for themselves and feather their old age nest at the same time.

10 points for wounded vets.

Is this unfair?

The facts remain, though--and I am talking about what "is"--not the "good/bad" dynamic of it all--is that preferences do cost money.

That's all I am saying.

As someone who served for decades in uniform, I can talk about this issue. I've seen the good and the bad of contracted support. When done prudently, it works well. When it becomes a way to affix a permanent siphon to the DOD, it's a resource drain. This is why I support in-depth, independent audits. I would like to see a few peaceniks on the audit board oversight team; there's nothing like a bit of vigorous opposition to give one an opportunity to view excesses with a fresh eye.

Good grief, I don't expect a fellow vet to get shirty with me for stating a few facts. I'm not "cheerleading" the fucking over of my fellow veterans, if that's the idea in your head--I'm just discussing the topic in a three-sixty fashion.

Not every one understands how the civil service works, let alone veteran's preference.

I tried to explain that in the first post. Civil service pensions have changed.

Almost everybody is covered under social security and the Federal Retirement System which is an IRA. No one under the new system can double dip with out an offset of 90% to their social security if they were retired under the older civil service pension program.

So even though I pay into social security, I will never collect more than 10%. That's in the plus column for the civilian side who never did military service or worked as a government employee.

I did not go to work for DOD.

I know people who did contract work for DOD that were retired military. What they got paid was far larger than what a government employee would have received The offset being in lieu of a pension or any thing else a vet might receive. I'm not a big fan of government contractors. The mess they leave behind has to be dealt with by the government employees.

Are we good?

with thousands more on the street because of what they don't spend.

since the Cold War, it's the only discretionary spending that doesn't involve a huge fight.

It's out of hand, for sure, but every congressional district benefits in some way so it's become impossible to slow it down. Even stuff the military doesn't want is still made because some congressman pushed the project.

That's the President's nest egg. He is--after all--the Commander in Chief. That's his "discretionary" spending proposal--not his MANDATORY spending proposal.

That looks more like this:




It's easy to make something look worse than it is. I think we could reduce our military spending enormously without much if any risk to our national security, but I do NOT want to do that on the backs of veterans--and that's usually where Congress goes when they look for efficiencies.

And it occupies 57% of all discretionary spending.

We're not spending all our dough on the military. It's around seventeen percent, and that is the whole magilla.

http://nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/