Military Doing Better Than Rest

GOP hypocrites neglect poor — while drafting secret pro-military loophole - Salon.com:

...I don’t begrudge military veterans on disability or their survivors from pension benefits they were promised at enlistment; this policy was fairly appalling. If I ran the zoo they would get enough for a stable retirement, just like every American worker whose toil deserves some dignity in old age. But the disparity between how Congress jumps for the needs of the military and how every other employee of the federal government, every long-term unemployed worker, and every food stamp recipient gets treated is striking.

I should add that this largess is not limited to a minor provision for veterans. In fact, the whole military budget will benefit from a bait-and-switch by appropriators. They kept the baseline military budget at $488 billion for the fiscal year, as per prior agreement. But they raised the “overseas contingency operations” budget, money that’s supposed to be dedicated to active war operations in places like Afghanistan, to $91.7 billion, $7 billion over the Obama administration’s 2014 budget request. The clear goal here is to give the Pentagon an OCO slush fund to make up for any reductions in their baseline budget...