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The new US military is now a regular job without benefits and longer deployments.
So I am a USAF veteran and my wife is currently active duty. She has been my inspiration to further my education. She has two associate degrees and is six classes away from her bachelors degree. I had nothing. But thanks to certain presidents, excluding Obama, I had the oportunity to actually get paid to go to school. I opt for the post 9/11 GI Bill and after a year I have kept a 3.77 GPA and made the Dean's list at my college. THANKS A WHOLE BUNCH TO MILITARY BENEFITS!! Now my wife was scheduling a class recently, and learned that the TA (tuition assistance) has been canceled for active duty members. I would believe this has something to do with the budget cuts and sequestration. After the inception of the Post 9/11 GI Bill, over 745,000 service members have used the bill and many more in the begginings of the Montgomery GI bill. I recently seen a college commercial bosting about how there will be tens of thousands of jobs opennings but with no educated people to fill them. How are we to further educate ourselves to prepare for the world outside of the military? I have never seen military benefits come under attack so frequently and so often for any reason. This is the US military, the most powerful and feared in the world. With all the budget cuts, benfit cuts, and now losing the job security that once was once gauranteed when signing the dotted line and committing to sacrificing a lot of personal time away from friends and family in dangerous locations and putting your personal issues aside for the mission, the military is now less appealing than working as a gas station as an attendant employee... trust me, I know I have done both. When I started out, I worked on the flightline on airplanes. I worked over 12 hours a day five days a week and sometimes weekends at home, outside in any type of weather, freezing or blistering hot, and only cleared around $500 in my pocket each payday. At nineteen, my responsibilities were monumental. When homestation, people's lives down range depended directly on my ability to troubleshoot and fix planes. I could accidently kill someone or myself and damage a multi- milllion dollar aircraft... but durring that time I had all my benefits and they were secured. Now there is no security, our benifits have the ability to change whenever it suits someone who has never served or earned anything similar to what we have earned. I am now learning the hard way that our benefits, veteran and active duty, are no longer invincible. The sacrifices that I have made and my wife made obivously means little to congress and the current administration. They may blow a lot of smoke, but their actions speek louder.
There are three main reasons why people enlist; to see the world, job security, and benefits. Two of those are constantly on the chopping block and are already being taken away and threatened. So other than seeing the world and parts of the world a normal person would wish they would have never seen and spending 6 months to a year in those places and not spending a single Christmas for four straight years with your familiy and friends because your overseas, what incentive is there to serve your country now? At least when your contracted outside of the military, they are obligated to keep up their end of the contract. The military is just an easy way out for budget reasons if the president allows it. Say what you want about George Bush jr., but I never worried about my pay or benefits.
So I SAY TO CONGRESS AND TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.... stop messing around with "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA'S" military. We serve to protect your freedoms and family. How about cutting congress benefits or president's pay when the budget can not be agreed upon. Unfortunately for us service members, we are defensless to your "BENEFITS ATTACKS". Call it budget cuts, but you are still attacking our benefits and we are unable to defend ourselves because we agreed to serve and shut up. But I ask you, how does it make you feel that you are a bully who is constantly picking on and attacking a defenseless victim?
There are three main reasons why people enlist; to see the world, job security, and benefits. Two of those are constantly on the chopping block and are already being taken away and threatened. So other than seeing the world and parts of the world a normal person would wish they would have never seen and spending 6 months to a year in those places and not spending a single Christmas for four straight years with your familiy and friends because your overseas, what incentive is there to serve your country now? At least when your contracted outside of the military, they are obligated to keep up their end of the contract. The military is just an easy way out for budget reasons if the president allows it. Say what you want about George Bush jr., but I never worried about my pay or benefits.
So I SAY TO CONGRESS AND TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION.... stop messing around with "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA'S" military. We serve to protect your freedoms and family. How about cutting congress benefits or president's pay when the budget can not be agreed upon. Unfortunately for us service members, we are defensless to your "BENEFITS ATTACKS". Call it budget cuts, but you are still attacking our benefits and we are unable to defend ourselves because we agreed to serve and shut up. But I ask you, how does it make you feel that you are a bully who is constantly picking on and attacking a defenseless victim?
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