The Effect of Military Pay Cuts

In today’s economy, because of the rescission, many organizations are making huge cuts to their spending budgets, in an effort to streamline business costs, to operate more efficiently. Along with the rest of the business world, our government is doing the same. Trying to balance the deficit, the government is always looking at efficient ways to streamline the U.S. budget. In this case they are cutting military pay to streamline the military budget.
Recently, President Obama, in his budget summary, has talked about "A new Era of Responsibility" in which he has proposed a raise of only two point nine percent, which is only a minimum wage cost of living upgrade for our military personnel. In light of our current war time situation, this cut in military pay would send the wrong message to our troops and their families. Because over the past thirty years our military has always gotten a cost of living raise, which is around three percent each year.
This is confirmed by the Army Times, which says that "...Every year of this decade so far, the military pay raise has been at least one-half percentage point above the average private-sector wage growth, a sustained effort by Congress to close a purported gap between military and civilian pay that some say has existed since 1982. The gap reportedly stands at 2.9 percent today". (Army Times)
If the budget is approved for a reduction in pay for all of the military services, the ripple effect of this cut would be devastating our military troops and their families. We are already sending our fighting troops overseas and away from their families for up to a year or longer. And now we are asking them to sacrifice even more by taking a cut in pay? I don't think so. They need to continue getting their yearly raises, which is a small price to pay, compared to what our troops have to sacrifice on a daily basis. Our government needs to re-examine our budget and allocate some money from other sources that are not benefiting the tax...