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FOR DECADES, elected officials of both parties have talked a great deal about reducing the deficit. But their actions have gone spectacularly in the other direction — dramatically raising spending while cutting taxes, and then blaming each other for growing the national debt to nearly $14 trillion (with a “t”).
In the October 2010 issue of Military Officer, the article “Dealing With the Deficit” (
http://bit.ly/bJ7ris) outlined how a perfect storm of the already massive debt, compounded by two wars, the recent national economic meltdown, the coming wave of baby boomer retirements, and dramatically rising health care costs, threatens to saddle America in coming decades with the kind of debt problems that are bankrupting Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain. Recognition of the seriousness of
the problem led to an agreement by the executive and legislative branch- es to appoint a bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform to recommend necessary actions to get the country back on a fiscally responsible path. Cochaired by former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and former Clinton White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles, the commission issued in December 2010 a final report that was endorsed by a bipartisan major- ity, 11 of the 18 commissioners. This didn’t meet the 14-vote supermajor- ity required to force an up-or-down congressional vote on the recom- mendations, but it reflected a greater- than-expected consensus among some who previously had expressed widely divergent views. Commissioners endorsing the plan included Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chair of the Senate Budget Commit-
82 MILITARY OFFICER MARCH 2011
tee. While House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) didn’t vote for the overall plan, both Ryan and Conrad pledged to seek inclusion of at least some elements in the FY 2012 budget resolution, which is being for- mulated as you read this article. The commission and several other
deficit-reduction panels that convened in 2010 agreed both spending cuts and revenue increases are required to re- store a reasonable fiscal balance. All of them proposed cutbacks in Medicare and other federal health care pro- grams, federal COLAs, defense spend- ing (including military and federal civilian retirement), and Social Secu- rity, as well as reform of the federal tax code to raise revenue. The following offers a com- mentary on selected commission proposals that would affect the uni- formed-services community.
Defense and workforce issues The fiscal commission proposed: • capping 2012 defense spending at the 2011 level and returning to the 2008 level (adjusted for inflation) in 2013, with a fixed amount added for war costs; • freezing federal civilian (and con- gressional) pay at the 2010 rates for the next three years; • cutting the federal civilian work- force by 200,000 over the next 10 years; and
• reducing the number of service- members stationed overseas by one-third. In November, Bowles and Simpson
released their own plan, which pro- posed freezing “noncombat military pay” at the 2011 levels for three years. Subsequently, President Obama
proposed freezing federal civilian (but not military) pay for 2011 and 2012. Congress passed that, and it was signed into law in December 2010. As the proposal went through Con-
gress, then-House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) argued service- members, other than those in combat, should “share the federal civilians’ sacrifice” on the pay freeze. MOAA took exception, noting the
1.4-percent military pay raise was the smallest in 48 years, even while servicemembers and their families have been asked to bear 100 percent of the nation’s wartime sacrifice for the past decade. Further, it would be inappropriate
to give a raise to those in a combat zone on Jan. 1 but not to those who left a combat zone in December or who will arrive in one in February. It also is wrong to limit raises to those embarking on their first combat tours while denying it to those who have completed four or five tours.
Social Security The commission proposed, among other things:
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