TA cost the DoD $542 million in 2010. That same year, total military spending was $683.7 billion.
Given the numbers involved, and knowing how successful TA has been as a recruiting tool, I can’t help but feel that choosing to kill TA in lieu of other less inflammatory cuts is a political move, but I’m not sure to what end. Or maybe I just don’t understand this whole sequestration thing.
You have to cut something. With un-employment still high and the economy poor, why wouldn’t you cut a $500M plus program when you can get the recruiting and retention that you need?
A 9% cut is a lot to most portions of DoD. I’d be surprised if this didn’t take a hit. Keep in mind, in your $683B figure, you have to exclude military personnel pay, which is over $150B, so you have much less to play with.
IIRC, tuition assistance comes from the same pot of money that funds training, operations, depot maintenance, base operations, and civilian personnel. Under sequestration, the military can cut back more in any one of these areas in order to preserve funding for another activity funded with the same money.
In this case, it is estimated that training will be cut back for all Army BCTs except those next in line to deploy. Army civilians are subject to 22 days of furlough (a pay cut of 20%), which is the maximum allowed without firing them. Meanwhile, the Army is getting smaller and becoming much more selective in recruiting. There is no recruiting shortfall that I’m aware of.
Do I like tuition assistance programs? Yes. I’m glad we have a military that values the professional development of each service member.
Is it worth prioritizing tuition assistance over other pressing needs at this point, given the stupidity of sequestration? I’m not sure about that. A soldier having to miss next semester’s classes because a subsidy is on hiatus seems to be a relatively livable sacrifice, considering the other more serious effects of the budget cuts that are predicted.
Obviously a political move, a calculated decision that would result in enormous Facebook outrage. Want to cut our military budget, huh? You obviously hate the troops! Bullshit.
Specifically, what “less inflammatory cuts”? They have to cut 8% of their budget, that pretty obviously means they’re going to have to get rid of programs that are important to people. If not this, then something else that would piss people off.
The military does not always truly control their budget as I recall. They can’t choose which bases to close - they usually have to work with Congress. Same with weapons systems, which have their manufacturing parceled out to as many different states as possible.
I am sure that the military could safely shave 8% if they were given 100% control, and somehow promised no repercussions from pissed off members of Congress.
Pissed off members of Congress generally come from pissed off constituents. Since the reply you quoted was asking for a way to do the cuts without pissing people off, saying they could do so if they didn’t have to worry about pissing people off is kind of tautological.
But in any case, the Sequestration puts limits on what they can cut. And there’s the practical concern that at least some of the cuts are likely to be lifted, so they’re limited to only cutting things that can be undone without too much pain (can’t sell off a carrier group, etc). Regardless of what “could be done if they could cut anything they wanted to”, they can’t cut anything they want to.
9.4% is a lot of money to cut. The Service’s are still charged with fighting and winning wars. And they have more control over their budgets than you are giving them credit for. If the Chief of Staff of the Air Force has the choice of grounding two airwings or cutting TA, he’ll take a minor tone of the force hit to keep is warfighting operational capabilities - as I think he should.
You are correct many times over. For example there is a law that prevents state-side military bases from buying electricity from anyone except the local utility. Changing this law would save the DoD about a half billion dollars a year. But it won’t get changed.
I work on a military finance procurement program which has many rules from Congress that costs taxpayers money. For example we must spend a percentage of our funds on small and disadvantaged businesses. Many of these businesses stay small on purpose. Lots of the ‘disadvantaged’ businesses are a joke. What they do have in common is greater costs and inferior service.
Shame about TA. I got a BS and MA degree while active duty. TA paid for about 75% of it and the GI Bill paid about 10%. It’s one of the reasons I stayed in the military for 24 years.
I’ve often thought of a cartoonish summary of California’s budget process: voters like education, so they approve a referendum that requires 40% of the state’s budget to go to schools.
Voters also like quality roads and bridges, especially in a state with so many cars, and a growing need for mass transit. So they approve a referendum requiring 40% of the budget go to transportation projects.
But law and order is also a very important thing, so voters approve a referendum requiring no less than 40% of the budget go to law enforcement and crime reduction programs.
Cut better and smarter, but don’t screw the troops this way. We do a great job of enabling the best fighting forces the world has ever known, but we can do much better at deprogramming our troops after they’ve done their duty, when they’re transitioning out into the civilian world. Cutting education programs only makes it worse.
Do we support our troops, really? Well then, let’s support our troops.
When name tapes first came out in the Marine Corps years ago, one tape location was above one of the rear trouser pockets. We’d ask ourselves Why there?, and the best we could figure was so the government would know who they’re screwing while we’re bent over.
Using education funding as a recruitment tool has always seemed like a weird way to go about things. The one thing the military always has to offer is economy of scale; it’s fucking huge. Let it open its own colleges to train soldiers.
The latter. For the amount it costs to send one soldier to a normal university (with a football team, fancy student union, delusions-of-grandeur research park and so on) you could probably educate half a dozen in a DoD-run college on base.
I’d be willing to bet that the TA stuff is more of a retention tool rather than a recruiting tool, and unless they’re looking to downsize, they’d be smart to keep it around so that people who want to stay in and get educated can, rather than lose them and their experience to the civilian world.
The Army is going to get rid of something like 70,000 billets over the next few years. Sure, there’s always the issue of how to keep someone with special skills, but let’s get real: the Army pretty much has the pick of who to keep around right now. There’s tons of stories online about how if a soldier has any black marks on his record, even as being as simple as being a little overweight, that solider is basically done for. Retention just simply isn’t an issue.
And DoD operates tons of universities. Well, maybe not tons, but just off the top of my head there’s the multiple staff and command colleges, there’s the Naval Postgraduate School, there’s the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, National Defense University, the Air Force Institute of Technology, Defense Acquisition University… seriously, those are just off the top of my head. They aren’t necessarily “go get a doctorate in philosophy” type of universities, but I’ve heard some officers in the Air Force get tired of being sent to take classes somewhere instead of doing actual work. YMMV.