I’m fairly sure this didn’t actually happen but an actual military person is telling me it did.
Ummm… hogwash.
There were some sever cutbacks in certain areas (about which some service members are less than pleased). But they still got paid.
I’ve been retired since before Obama’s administration and still received pension payments the entire time. My pension is based on a percentage of my final pay (I entered service pre-1980) and is subject to annual cost of living adjustments (COLA.) It is true for several years during the Obama Presidency we have not received a COLA (we received 3.6% in 2012.) This is because the COLA is indexed to the CPI and flat CPI rates for several years meant no pay increase.
From the kindest, wisest Philosopher King, down to the most depraved tyrannical baby-killing dictator, one thing EVERY successful leader does is . . .
- . . . keep your soldiers paid and well-fed! *
[sub]Even who-da-guy, boss in N. Korea, understands that.[/sub]
Yeah? Name one.
Actually, I’ve read that he has trouble with that.
Is your friend on the drugs?
During the “debt crisis” in spring of 2011, there was a threat that unless Congress reached some sort of agreement, there would be a government shutdown. This led to all sorts of hand-wringing over whether soldiers in combat areas would be asked to fight while not being paid. The Secretary of Defense said “relax, you’ll all get paid.” The phony crisis never materialized, nobody ever missed a day of pay, but that did stop the crazies on the message boards from reporting that SOLDIERS AREN’T BEING PAID.
That’s how politics works, folks.
During the entire Obama administration, for most members of the military, there were anywhere between 27 and 30 days in each and every month when they did not receive a paycheck.
Cute. :rolleyes:
Anyway, they always got paid. As above, there was some mention of soldiers going unpaid during various budget crises. The official guidance was that they would still show up to work and then get their payment in arrears after Congress resolved the issue.
Obviously, nobody likes this prospect and in each case Congress passed emergency funding to keep the military running, even if the rest of the government had to take shut-down days.
The short answer is that the Op’s friend is lying or stupid; and if it is a lie, it’s a stupid lie. Who believe’s this shit?
Training, for one. A Navy friend tells me that his annual allotment of ammunition went from 1.5 million rounds per year to 250,000 (he’s a gunner). Several major projects have been de-funded (some for very good reason).
When I mention “severe cutbacks,” of course, I’m including “re-allocations” of funding. Generally, these aren’t prescribed directly by the Administration or Congress, but dictated by the needs of DoD and its respective services.
During the current administration’s tenure, spending trended upward at a consistent rate. It’s google-able and heavily audited. For a primer, you could look at thisarticle. At present, forecasts are for continued reductions.
Regardless of what happens economically, the last thing we’re going to do is stop paying our war fighters. That’s a recipe for desertions and disasters.
Here’s a quick test for these types of stories: if they were true is there any chance you wouldn’t have heard about during a Presidential campaign?
Wildly unlikely, unless sometime in the last seven years the DoD revised its pay schedule. Payday was every two weeks. Period.
Good point. If you wanna play the “soft on defense” angle, that’d be a high floater waiting to be driven completely out of the park. We wouldn’t be able to avoid hearing about it, over and over and over.
Not one peep.
I think OP’s friend was trolling. More to my specific point, I’d be personally outraged if my military retired pay kept flowing without a ripple and Pvt. Dogface in Whatthefuckistan got zero-paid.
Never happened. At least, in no universal fashion. If OP’s friend was talking about some specific schmuck who stopped getting paid because he was hurry-up discharged for something, that’s a different matter, and completely irrelevant to the purported matter.
When I was in (2001-2008), you could choose whether you got paid once or twice a month. “Every two weeks” was not an option.
It’s a joke. Only two days out of the month are payday.
What? That’s 4,109 rounds per day (assuming he is ‘training’ as a gunner every single day of the year. If they keep him firing every hour of the day except for 8 hours sleeping (no lunch or bathroom breaks, do that at your gun) that’s 256 rounds per hour. Quite a training regimen. He must be a really good gunner by now.
But I just don’t see that as such a “severe cutback”.
So all those rounds of ammo the Fish and Game Bureau bought were actually for GiantRat’s friend all along.
If he was a Seahawk gunner with an M240 he could go through those 256 rounds in about 20 seconds.