TM7, I think you need to re-study your history.
Amendment III
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The Third Amendment does not address compensation of governmental employees or military members; it addresses the issue of the government commandeering private property to use as military/government property. You could possibly stretch this to mean using tax dollars to fund military compensation/pensions, however that is addressed in the tax laws. Historical thought on this issue was it was included to prevent the government from dropping off a squad of soldiers at your door step and ordering you to feed / house them at your expense. On the 1700’s frontier this could literally be a death sentence for a family if all their food stuffs were consumed by forced billeting of soldiers in their home.
If our government is to provide for the common safety of the people by maintaining a standing military force, then we as a people have to fund this through our government. Military pensions and health care are
not an entitlement ; they are
deferred compensation for services provided over an extended period of time. Military pay is lower than civilian pay for jobs with comparable responsibility. If you care to end the military retirement system, that is fine. But, we will have to increase military pay scales to keep quality servicemen and women in the forces.
The problems with the military pension liabilities are that they occur after the need for the service and the benefits are received by a relatively few individuals. When politicians are searching for monies to fund "popular" social programs (read entitlement/vote buying programs), it is very easy to spout out the mantra of overly generous military retirement and health care programs are killing the budget. The retired military community is not an extremely large voting block and therefore is an easy target. The truth is our "wise" politicians contracted an obligation to our career military and failed to fund it as a pay-as-you accrue system. Now, to cover their ineptitude and irresponsibility, they want to “break without cause” the contract between the US Government and the retired military.
If you, like I, are upset about “entitlement programs”; let’s work to reign in welfare, food stamps, social security disability and a host of other entitlement programs. Welfare is needed, but it should be held to levels that encourage people to look for work to get off welfare and not try to stay on welfare because, “I get just as much from Welfare as I would if I worked.” Food Stamps are welfare for Kroger, Piggly Wiggly, and Hy-Vee; not for the poor. Return to the commodity system. Yes, it will cost just as much as our current food stamp system, but the government price supports will benefit the agricultural community which benefits all of us by stabilizing the cost of food stuffs. And yes, the government run warehouses will require government employees to run and to distribute the food to the needed. But, those jobs (or the job someone left to take this job) will be filled by individuals who were once on welfare. As a taxpayer, I would prefer to use my tax dollars to distribute food to the poor rather than to enrich the major grocery chains. An added benefit is a probable reduction of fraud. It is very easy to trade or sell food stamps, but it is much harder to trade or sell commodity food stuffs. Social Security Disability is a nightmare! You’re a drug addict, you’re disabled we’ll give you a check. You’re too fat, your disabled we’ll give you a check. You’re stupid, you’re disabled we’ll give you a check. Now before I get roasted alive, yes there are people who need and deserve SS Disability; but the system is grossly abused and our politicians support that abuse by passing inane laws to promote the abuse of the system. Our next step in this great debacle is “National Health Care Reform”. I wonder how badly they can goof that up. There will be no health care reform without tort reform and tort reform is not even being looked at. Hopefully it won’t cost too much more than the 1.2 Trillion dollars they are planning to tax our grandchildren.
One thing we could do to reduce our federal government pension obligations is to immediately terminate all legislative pensions. Currently our Congressmen are paid at the level of a Major General in the Armed Forces. To draw a full pension with full, no deductable health care they have to serve – no less than one partial term!! Talk about an entitlement program, 2-6 years as a Congressman and you get a pension for life.
Sorry about the rant, but my fuse got lit.
