A new proposal drafted by a panel of lawmakers to cut military retirement pay by about 20 percent will handicap the armed services' ability to recruit and retain the best and the brightest, said retired Col. Derek Harvey, former director of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Center at the U.S. Central Command, during an appearance Wednesday on
Newsmax TV's "America's Forum."
"It will clearly cut into attracting people into the military, but it will (also) undermine our ability to keep the best officers and NCOs (non-commissioned officers) in the force as they hit those mid-career points and make decisions about the sacrifices of military service versus the benefits," Harvey said.
"They will have to come down on a decision of getting out, and we'll lose the better officers and NCOs."
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The detainees at Guantanamo Bay are treated better than U.S. military veterans, who are subjected to understaffed VA medical centers and have been forced to wait months and years for care, added former Defense Department spokesman J.D. Gordon.
"There are 122 terrorists at Guantanamo and they've got about 100 doctors and nurses, yet that's the priority of President Obama," Gordon said. "The ratio for our veterans to healthcare providers is about 35 to 1. That says a lot about President Obama's priorities — they're wrong.
"The last thing we want is for President Obama to take more benefits away from the military."
Instead of prioritizing the troops, bureaucrats are putting the brunt of the fiscal woes on the backs of soldiers, Harvey said.
"There's a focus amongst the civilian leadership of concentrating on getting new weapons and new programs," he said. "They do not want to undermine those relationships with the contractor world, big industry, and they want the new toys.
"The only place they're focused on getting money from is from the people who are doing the fighting and the sacrificing.
"The civilian bureaucracies in these organizations have grown dramatically over the last 14 years. Meanwhile, we've cut the military significantly."
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