WASHINGTON — Francis Brady enjoys a six-figure salary and generous benefits at the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, but as a retired Marine lieutenant colonel he and his family remain on the military’s bountiful lifetime health insurance, Tricare, with fees of only $460 a year. He calls the benefit “phenomenal.” “Don’t ask the folks who have done so much more for this country, who have been called to act since 9/11, to be the first in line to give some more,” said Norbert R. Ryan Jr., a retired vice admiral and president of the military officers’ group. As for Tricare’s generous benefits, Admiral Ryan said that anyone “can get this good deal — go over to a recruiting office and sign up for Iraq and Afghanistan.”
I have better ideas. Outlaw unions of public employees. If they don't like that, they are always free to seek more gainful employment elsewhere. Cut the pay of all non-military federal employees 20% now, and eliminate their defined-benefit pensions, make them pay for their retirement the way the vast majority of Americans have to, nowadays. Military pension & retiree benefits are the last thing to be cut, just before the US government goes out of existence. |