Congress Must Scrap Generous DoD Benefits For Future Forces: Rep. Hunter

http://breakingdefense.com/2013/11/congress-must-scrap-generous-dod-benefits-for-future-forces-rep-hunter/



Congress Must Scrap Generous DoD Benefits For Future Forces: Rep. Hunter
By Colin Clark and Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
on November 14, 2013 at 1:25 PM

WASHINGTON: Career soldiers can retire at 42, get a great deal on Tricare health insurance, take home a pension, and get paid a good private-sector salary on top of that. That can’t continue to be the norm for the military and Congress must create a two-tier pay system, says Rep. Duncan Hunter, Marine Corps reservist and member of the House Armed Services Committee.

“It’s time for Congress to look at this,” Hunter said at the inaugural Defense One conference. The message must be sent that, “If you join tomorrow things are going to be different.”

Hunter was careful to argue that those currently in the military should still get the benefits promised them, but the next group must receive reduced benefits, because growing compensation costs will eat up a majority of the defense budget should they go unchecked. If a servicemember retires and gets a good private sector job — say as a defense contractor — then they don’t need Tricare, Hunter said: “You should have to buy into [private] healthcare and stop being subsidized by the American taxpayer.”

Congress, however, has been a big part of the problem, repeatedly increasing benefits over what’s proposed in the President’s budget and rejecting even modest increases in, for example, Tricare fees. ”When a recommendation comes from the Department of Defense and then what comes back is a number higher than what was proposed, of course we have to pay that,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Snow, the Army’s outspoken director of strategy, plans, and policy, at the conference this morning. “This is a challenge because the Congress has opted obviously in some cases to pay even more than we asked.”