The other shoe has finally dropped. Secretary of Defense Hagel released today official word on how sequestration will affect the DoD civilian workforce. In a nutshell all the civilian employees (approx 800,000 of us) will be forced to take 11 days of unpaid furlough between June and the end of September. This translates into a rougly 4.2% pay cut for the year. You can read the full memo here: SecDef Furlough Memo
We all knew that this was coming, but here's the part, down in the second paragraph, that really made my head want to explode:
"...because our wartime budget is also subject to sequestration, we must utilize funds originally budgeted for other purposes in order to provide our troops at war
with every resource they need. To compound our problems, when we estimated future wartime operating costs more than a year ago, we planned on fuel costs below what we are currently experiencing. Taken together, all these factors lead to a shortfall in our O&M (Operations and Maintenance) accounts of more than $30 billion..." Emphasis added by me.
Follow me below the fleur de Kos for why this irks me to no end and why it should you too!
Let me walk you through why I'm steamed. The Department of Defense employs over 800,000 civilians. Of that number roughly 44% of us are veterans. So, not only did we sacrifice our safety, family life, and health, both physical and emotional, fighting the damn wars, now that we have gotten off the deployment roller coaster and are attempting to pick up the pieces of our lives greatly disrupted, we now have to foot the bill for it! In effect, the folks directly supporting the wars, of whom a very significant number actually faught, are being hit with a 4.2% war tax. This is on top of frozen, as in none, zero, nada, zip, pay raises for the past three years. Again, another case of the other 1%, those that actually served in war, subsidizing the refusal of the top 1% to pay what they rightfully owe.
But we are not done yet. There's salt to be rubbed into this wound. The other reason for the furloughs is because the gas that we need to keep all those vehicles, helicopters, jets, and ships going has gotten more expensive than anticipated. So insted of dipping into the strategic petroleum reserve, which is, you know, our wartime stockpile, we are forking over yet more cash, coming from the wallets of those that actually are close to the wars, over to the oil companies. I guess the oil companies must need the money. Let's see here, Big Oil Profits - and Tax Breaks - Remain High Despite Sequestration Cuts... Oh, you have got to be @#$ing $%^ing me! And for the final kicker, Q1 2013 profits for the top 5 oil companies are roughly $30 billion. Why does that number look familiar? Why that's the amount we are short by (see above) that's being given as the reason for the furloughs in the first place.
Mother $%^&er!
So if I hear one more chicken hawk d-bag Republican mindlessly blathering on about "supporting our troops," this retired troop is likely to explode with a loud and resounding Brooklyn-style "oh yeah? Support this!"