Thursday, April 07, 2011

Despite House Offer, Obama Will Not Pay Soldiers

The House of Representatives offered a plan which would fund the Department of Defense for the rest of the fiscal year--but reduce spending on other Federal programs.

Obama, the Commander-in-Chief, decided that he'd rather not pay our soldiers.

Soldiers will continue to earn money but not be paid during a government shutdown, a senior Obama administration official said. “Military will continue to work as I described earlier,” the official said. “They will continue to earn money during this period of time. Given that we do not have any money to pay out, they will not be paid.

Boehner & Co. had put this on the table:

The continuing resolution would include $515.8 billion in base funding for the Department of Defense, a 2.9 percent reduction from the president’s fiscal year 2011 request, and a $7.6 billion, or 1.5 percent, increase over last year’s level, according to the House Appropriations Committee.

Further, the temporary funding bill would provide $157.8 billion for overseas operations and includes $126.4 billion for military personnel, providing for 1,432,400 active duty and 846,200 reserve troops.

Obama's decision to play politics with the military is utterly amazing.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Of course, Obama's Praetorian Guard will continue to be fully-funded.

Anonymous said...

Obama is an SOB

Amy said...

Of course, Obama's Praetorian Guard will continue to be fully-funded.

As well as his supply of waygu beef, no doubt.

Good luck shoring up that military vote in 2012, Obama.

neomom said...

He won't have to shore it up Amy. None of their votes count anyway because the D states don't send them early enough for them to get turned around and counted. See NY in 2010 for a prime example.

But I'm not amazed by this at all. What I am amazed at is that rank and file Kennedy-style Democrats still support this moron.

J. Strupp said...

How is this any different than threatening to cut off unemployment insurance extensions to a few million Americans so that Republicans could get keep their top end tax cuts? While I don't agree with Obama in this case, at least our troops will eventually be paid once a budget is agreed upon.

Threaten to delay paychecks to the troops and people are OUTRAGED, but threaten to cut UI to a few million Americans who have been out of work during a time where median unemployment duration is 6 months and we tell those "losers" to stop sucking on the government's tit and go get a job (unless of course we let rich folks feed at the trough some more).

Our priorities are mixed up in this country.

neomom said...

99 weeks of UI is a lot longer than 6 months...

J. Strupp said...

Great. Thanks.

Median duration.

neomom said...

I grew up watching my dad get laid off constantly from '74 to '81 when the plant finally shut down. Know what he did to put food on the table? He worked part time jobs. Lots of them. Delivering pizzas, cleaning the floors at the dime store at night, breeding cows. At one point, he held 5 part time jobs. Not once did he ever even dream of just sitting on his hiney to collect an unemployment check. We need more people like my dad.

J. Strupp said...

Again with the anecdotal. We don't live in that world. We live in this one:

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf



This ain't 1972. Tell your rah rah story to the guy in Janesville or Detroit or Silicon Valley sittin' on an upside down house he can't sell in order to pick up and move to a place so he can work the night shift delivering pizzas for $6.50 an hour. I'm glad your old man was a real American. But if you think the 5 or 6 million of the 8 million plus unemployed are sitting on their ass because they want to then the data says you're wrong.

neomom said...

We didn't pick up and move Strupp. We stayed in podunk semi-rural Wisconsin through all of the layoffs. But somehow, I'm thinking that Janesville has pizza joints. They just don't pay UAW wages.

And yeah, I know the economy has folks hurting. My other half has been mostly unemployed for 3 years - we sent him back to school after the first 6 months. But I also know - personally - people that have collected the full 99 weeks and didn't start worrying about even trying to get employed until the last 6 weeks.

The added irony of course is that the more you make existing businesses pay for all that UI, the less likely they are to hire.

Roland Melnick said...

Here's what happened:

CNN release results of a poll that said that 100% of the American public was against funding baby-killers. Republicans quickly moved to strip Planned Parenthood of it taxpayer support. Obama's first thought was to not pay our soldiers.

Sara said...

You know some of us that you say are just "sitting on our butts collecting checks" really can't find jobs. The unemployment rate is so high not even Mc Donalds is hiring.

So before you think that most of america is just sitting on our butts maybe you should go downa and ask some of the people sitting in Unemployment or people looking for jobs.

I'm sure more than half of us would rather be working than worrying about finding a job but cant not even part time, or worrying how their going to keep a roof over there head and food on the table.