1) The pay should be fair to U.S. Armed Forces personnel compared to the
skills, experience, and risks taken by civilian workers.
2) The federal government should always make good on its financial promises
for medical and retirement benefits.
3) We should look internationally for best-practices in all operational
areas. Prototypes for making positive changes to the U.S. Armed Forces
disability and retirement benefits packages need to reflect a comprehensive and
current offering of financial services.
4) Provide for a strong common defense that is directly in alignment with the
U.S. Constitution to help maintain troop morale. Always support major troop
deployments with full authorization from U.S. Congress.
5) Provide good, extremely affordable housing for all enlisted
personnel and their immediate families. Should have modern amenities and meet
current building codes and energy conservation principles.
Historical Cost Analysis
n the case of a full repeal of the current restriction, studies indicate
that the annual costs in FY 2003 would range from $3.6 billion to $5.3 billion
under the most conservative assumptions. Five-year costs would be $28.7 billion
for full repeal, $21.4 billion for the service-based option and $18.9 billion if
the repeal were limited to non-disability retirees only. Alternative costs are
substantially higher using VA cost estimates. Some studies project that spending
the same amount of money on across-the-board pay raises would have a retention
effect ten times greater than the impact predicted for the repeal options.
As a U.S. Senator, based on the current separate purposes of the two systems,
I would recommend that that no changes be made to the current prohibition on
concurrent receipt of payments from the two systems. However, disabled civilians
are usually eligible to receive Social Security disability benefits. To be fair,
I would therefore recommend that DoD and the U.S. Congress thoroughly evaluate
current military retirement benefit packages to determine whether they
adequately compensate retirees for their service, including any disabilities
suffered as a result of military service. Additionally, I would urge the DoD and
the U.S. Congress to review the relationship of length of service on future
earnings compared to the same relationship formula applied by U.S. corporations
and foreign governments, such as Canada and the UK.
Also, it is obviously important to motivate eligible persons to stay in
active military duty for as long as possible. Retaining is better than
retraining. Therefore, as a U.S. Senator, I would advocate significant pay
increases for active military personnel receiving average and above average
performance reviews. Anyone doing a good job in a high-risk situation, among
which working for the U.S. Armed Forces is certainly one, deserve no less than
this.
Obviously, funding these types of changes would require Congressional
appropriations. Libertarians believe that the federal government should be
extremely small and efficient, and limited in scope by the U.S. Constitution.
Just like any other endeavor of the federal government, our military needs to be
financially ethical and efficient. But this should not be be achieved at the
cost of providing a well-trained and motivated force for our common defense.
Higher pay for good performance and the knowledge that retirement benefits will
be fair to everyone should certainly help military personnel to be motivated to
do the best job of protecting us. Providing for a strong common defense is a
mandatory. function of the federal government.
