I've introduced you guys to Major General Arnold Punaro (USMC, retired) once before:
Through Leidos Holdings, he has a total compensation package of $2,735,249. His other sources of income seem minor in comparison - Sourcefire Inc came in at $172,239 and SAIC,Inc at $15,600, and DesignLine Corp at $149,998. He continues to give advice to the Pentagon via the Reserve Forces Policy Board and the controversial Defense Business Board.
General Punaro isn't the only rich guy serving on the Defense Business Board and, together, they recommend outcomes that would benefit the board members and their companies as much if not more than the Department of Defense:
Its 21 members know little about military affairs, but they are rich in Wall Street experience, including with some of the biggest companies implicated in the 2008 financial meltdown. They are investment bank CEOs and CFOs, outsourcing experts, and layoff specialists who promote a corporate agenda of "behavior change" and "business solutions" in the military bureaucracy. The board proposes not only to slash and privatize military pensions, but also to have the Pentagon invest in oil futures, boost pay for its executives and political appointees, and make it easier for them to fire rank-and-file employees while scaling back those workers' collective-bargaining rights.
Adam Weinstein, Mother Jones, Nov 21, 2011
General Punaro's inclusion gives the Defense Business Board military credibility and has opened up other opportunities for the General to speak out on reforming military pay and benefits. He did that yesterday, with the Center for American Progress (CAP). The video is available on
YouTube.
As soon as any organization invites General Punaro to speak, be warned. They won't be talking about how to save hard earned benefits and compensation but how to cut them.
First, you may need a basic rundown of what's been going on the last couple of months. A panel of experts, some military, some not, called the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Committee (MCRMC), made 15 recommendations to Congress on ways to save money through the reform of benefits and pensions earned by the military community. This compensation package is currently used not only to recruit but to retain quality, well-educated, and promotable service members.
President Obama recently said that though the proposals had merit, many of them needed "further consideration and study," including the proposals to reform both military retirement and TRICARE, the military health insurance program. However, the House Armed Services Committee has already included retirement reform in their proposed 2016 defense budget, setting up a last minute showdown that rarely in favor of the military community (lest we forget Ryan-Murray December 2013).
Queue the Center for American Progress (CAP), the supposedly liberal think tank that the Washington Post says is "poised to exert outsized influence over the 2016 president race and — should Hillary Clinton win it — the policies and agenda of the 45th President of the United States."
In a description of military benefits on the CAP website, they incorrectly state that "regular military pay is about twice as much as that of civilians with comparable education and experience." The government source for this statement actually says that military and civilian wages compare favorably. It is possible that CAP is including items like special pay and incentives given to pilots and other hard to retain career fields or tax free combat pay given to those that go to war but they do not make it clear.
They do correctly state that career officers tend to make twice as much as career NCO's and believe that this injustice should be remedied. I couldn't agree more. But whether they would prefer to cut officer salary or to raise senior enlisted salary to remedy this injustice is unclear.
When it comes to health care for military families, CAP correctly states that there are deficiencies in the current combined usage of TRICARE and military care facilities. But what they fail to state is that many of the problems come from not properly funding military health care in the first place and by reimbursing TRICARE doctors at no more than Medicare rates (often they pay less). The government seems to expect the civilian military community to help pay for our Department of Defense debt by looking kindly on military families and giving them a break when it comes to health care. Yet, without a quality health care program, the DoD would find it very difficult to retain military families.
Like many centrist Democrats, CAP does not propose providing health care but proposes that the government provide "world-class health insurance" at a reasonable cost. Military families don't want more insurance - they want the quality health care they have been promised as a benefit of service. In fact, I would venture to guess most Americans would prefer health care over health insurance any day of the week.
As to military retirement, CAP believes it to be overly generous and unfair to those who serve less than 20 years. Currently, in order to receive a pension, any active-duty service member must run the gauntlet, surviving both a rigorous promotion system and the stressors of basic military life which, since 9/11, include multiple deployments and longer than average workdays.
CAP believes that military service members should wait until at least 60 years of age to receive any pension yet many of today's retirees use that pension as a safety net upon direct retirement from the military. And CAP would prefer that part of the pension be supplied by a 401K investment plan, as recommended by the MCRMC. They have faith in the stock market and I believe that if this wedge 401K plan is allowed to pass, the next step will be to convert all military pensions to a 100% TSP plan.
In the words of one active duty military member:
So you don't think that after 6 bases in 15 years, never having owned a home and my spouse having to quit her job several times over that I don't deserve 50% in 5 years? My first wife and I got divorced after I spent a year in Iraq. Do you think I plan to just sit on my butt after I retire? Of course not. However throwing part of my retirement on the stock market is wrong. If I wanted to do TSP, I would have done it. Sorry that I used my pay on my family first thinking that there would be a light at the end of the tunnel. Personally, I feel betrayed by this notion.
commenter at KeepYourPromise Facebook page
He is not alone. There is a lot of fear that traditional pensions will no longer exist and that there will only be the stock market to turn too. Over at the
Keep Your Promise Facebook page, we hear concerns that service members will be expected to keep track of 401K investments while deployed, while working stressful hours, while moving every couple of years. The truth is, many do not want this choice and would prefer a basic pension.
For ourselves, that retirement pay will make up for the fact that we have not been able to invest in a home during my husband's career and will go towards paying for a permanent residence once we retire. My husband and I will both be over 50 when this happens.
For others, that retirement pay allows folks to go back to small-town America and open their own business. The economy is still tough in so many communities and that pension is used to jump start and maintain a foothold for retired military families.
And for some, that retirement pay is an honest to god safety net:
That retirement saved us from living in a shelter when my husband retired after 26 years and couldn't get a job anywhere but Lowes part time for the first year out of the army.
commenter at KeepYourPromise Facebook page
The problem is that the rich folks at CAP talk to rich generals like General Punaro, and don't talk to everyday military folks like us.
Most generals retire with a pension higher than the salary they earned while on active duty. That isn't mentioned by CAP at all. And then most generals take further government money in the form of consultant fees from the Department of Defense. Or they work as consultants for think tanks or media outlets. Or they go to work for government contractors and rake in the military industrial complex dough.
Let's be clear - these are not your average military retirees.
So now you have a good idea of where CAP stands. During yesterday's panel, General Punaro pushed the envelope on benefit and retirement cuts to the very edge. We know the game he is playing. We know that Congress will never accept the middle of the road answer unless it looks like the middle of the road. It is General Punaro's assignment to ask for the most extreme cuts he thinks he can get away with without sounding overly crazy. His extreme becomes the furthest that Congress could ever consider cutting. He basically gives them cover to make a lesser cut and say that it isn't as bad as it could be.
General Punaro and his fellow panelists at CAP are still crying that “we now pay almost as much in retirement as we pay the entire active and reserve force." Yet these are the same people that turn to military solutions time and time again. War hawks love a good war but they hate paying the price, especially when it means paying military retirees and veterans promised compensation and care.
They also claim that "military compensation eats up about one-third of the department’s budget" as if this is a new problem. Historically, military compensation has been about 1/3rd of the defense budget. And as we wind down from two wars, those costs are dropping. What is true is that fewer military members receive better quality benefits than in years past - something our nation should be proud of.
The good news for current retirees and active duty military is that Congress seems strongly inclined to grandfather any changes. That means we can all calm down, right? After all, the next generation can handle their own problems. In fact, another CAP defense expert, Phillip Carter, had this to say:
...the priority should be on the young warfighters who are going into harm’s way and need to be trained to do their jobs “even if it means retirees and veterans have to stand behind them.”
Carter doesn't care about past promises. What makes us think he will care about the those made by Congress in the near future? For him, none of this is written in stone and, like retirees from the 1990s who kissed their promised free health care goodbye, all future retirees need to watch their backs.
The truth is, those today's retirees and veterans are trying to stand up for the youngest in the service - we want to make sure that they don't get screwed by the powers that be.
When you're young and just entering the military, you're not always thinking 20+ years in the future. You often don't have extra pay to sock away into a 401K - we should know. As a 2nd Lt. my husband was sent to Eielson AFB, AK for his first assignment. We put heavy duty winter gear and a 4 WD truck on credit so that we could survive the first year. Between that and student loans, his paycheck was pretty well dedicated. And that was over 20 years ago. Today's young officers often have much higher student debt when they get started and current programs to void that debt make you wait for 10 years of active duty service. Pay off your student loans or put money into a 401K? The latter is tempting but no one wants to ruin their credit by not paying that student loan debt.
If General Punaro and his fellow Defense Business Board cronies have their way, our military community will become the perfect example of an oligarchy, with our leaders heavily invested in business concerns and decisions made to protect those investments rather than to protect our Constitution and the American people. The rank and file will find themselves with less and less, in both benefits and salary, making every dollar ever more important to their survival and making it less likely that they will complain about any decision being made for fear of losing even more.
If you haven't already, please call your US Representative and your Senators. Tell them how you feel. If you are open to changes in the military retirement system, explain to them that you don't want changes that will place veteran's retirement in possible jeopardy. Tell them you want health care for military families, not more health insurance. Tell them why the current benefits package has worked to retain your family's service... because we know at the end of the day that unless the spouse and kids are taken care of, our active duty service members can't properly do their jobs.
If you are a civilian reading this, thank you. Thank you for taking the time to care. We know that civilians are also facing similar problems, many coming from US companies that have given up trying to properly compensate their employees. I for one, speak up at every opportunity to support quality pension programs for all Americans. We hope you will do the same for us.