Santa Clarita Hypocrite Buck McKeon Wants To Take An Axe To Military Pensions

Although he hasn't announced it yet-- maybe because his spokesperson has other issues to deal with-- it's an open secret in Santa Clarita that Buck McKeon is retiring from congress to become a lobbyist for arms manufacturers. The biggest GOP recipient of legalistic bribes from war contractors and arms maker in Congress-- $1,515,700 and counting-- McKeon has always been an advocate for the military. Military men and women, though… not so much.

But it wasn't until he had made up his mind to try to make a fortune as a lobbyist that he started speaking out publicly against veterans and veterans benefits. Now he says we have to cut military pensions to save a budget that enriches his campaign donors and future employers. Or as Lee Rogers put it, "Gut military pensions to save the Pentagon budget? Instead of cutting wasteful spending on weapons the Generals don't want or need? Doesn't make sense unless you're a congressman that benefits from all that wasteful spending."

Rogers is the Democrat who nearly beat McKeon last year and has been working towards completing the job next year… this Democrat:

McKeon, godfather of the costly U.S. drone program and still hanging on as the disgraced Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee: "Forty-four cents of every dollar we spend goes to military personnel. You look at Detroit, you look at General Motors, you look at what happens when you build up these costs, but we aren’t doing anything about it in our [defense] bill this year.”

McKeon, of course, has been part of the Republican Party jihad that depletes the budget by granting rich people and corporations tax loopholes worth billions of dollars annually and by cutting the amount the wealthy pay in taxes. So now he wants to cut pensions for the men and women who have fought and sacrificed for this country. He would have never said it aloud before-- nor would most of his GOP colleagues-- but it's long been part of the Republican Party policy agenda.

After a decade of war, the promises made to those who served in the armed forces seemed sacrosanct. But this statement from a power broker like McKeon shows that military personnel may not be spared as Republicans in Congress seek to maintain the size of the military while also shrinking the deficit.

…Military pensions require no contribution from personnel, which make it the sort of “unfunded” liability the right-wing despises for workers, despite supporting a completely unfunded prescription-drug benefit to Medicare during the Bush administration.