Would US Troops Continue to Serve Unpaid?

Would US troops continue to serve on active duty (including overseas combat) if they went unpaid? If you think so, for how long?

If the US government doesn't continually raise the debt ceiling time and time again, there is a real possibility troops will not be paid for an extended amount of time.

 

If the debt ceiling isn't raised to government will obviously cut non-essential things like welfare until the expenditures match the income. The military might see some small cuts here and there but the US will of course not collapse just because it can't borrow anything more.

 

Hmmm, that is a tough one. Troops in a combat zone won’t have much of a choice. After all, the military controls the flights in and out of there so they would be stuck.

Single troops who live in barracks with access to the dining facility could hold out for quite a while. Troops and dependents who live in government housing would probably last a little while since they don’t have to worry about paying rent. But if you have dependents there is a limit to how long you can go without an income, especially the junior enlisted and junior officers who live paycheck to paycheck.

I think two months would be pushing for most people.

 

If military pay is such a large portion of the budget that not 'borrowing' more billions or trillions of dollars into existence would make it unaffordable, then we have a big spending problem in the military..

 

Troops would serve until the rest of the government disappeared, which would be less than 12 months of shutdown and default.
Then they'd serve the new government.
The whole debt ceiling thing would go away before the military did.
Either the president would do a trillion dollar coin, or a 14th amendment or just ignore congress, if congress put the country in default, they would be resigning in a sense.

 

I think the mission in Afghanistan is so endless and so muddled that I think they are already not very jacked about it.

 

We have a big spending problem in the military. Or, I should say defense spending. But, it is NOT due to paying the troops and it is NOT due to their benefits. It is due to unnecessary expenditures, such as foreign aid, F-16s and Abrams tanks to Egypt, the amount of overseas bases in the amount of countries we have them, big expensive buildings in Afghanistan rarely used by Americans if at all and then given to the Afghans, and an interventionist foreign policy to include perpetual war and involvement in the business of foreign governments.

So, to answer the question of the thread title, sure, why not, as long as the fat cat politicians and defense contractors are still making money off military involvement in foreign affairs. At least, this seems to be the sentiment of the powers that be.

 

In short, corruption. Corruption is destroying this country everywhere you look these days, it seems. They tax honest people to death to enrich themselves and their friends.

Yes, Virginia, it can happen here, and it has.

 

Exactly.

 

The government takes in over 2,000,000,000,000 in tax revenue every year - this is money they have available to spend even if they don't borrow anything. The cost of all pay, allowances and benefits for military members is about 155,000,000,000 - less than 8% of the government's revenue. The only reason our government would ever choose not to pay the military is if a politician was pulling a foolish political stunt.

Now, if that did happen, most military members would continue serving, at least for a while. Dereliction of duty or going AWOL is a very severe felony which most members will have to be pushed very far before they are willing to commit.

 

You would pay welfare before you would pay our troops?

 

The spending problem in the military would not be related to the salaries of soldiers serving in any branch of the military, though. They're not exactly payed handsomely for their services, but should be.

 

The debt ceiling doesn't have a damn thing to do with that possibility.

You assume this government considers military pay more essenential than welfare payments, a fact not in evidence.

Which seems pretty cut and dried until one stops to consider 13A.

 

...The military is THE top priority of ANY state. There's simply nothing else which is of more importance. Surely the US, and any other country for that matter, aren't so foolish as to allow their military -and thus their standing as a great power- to collapse just so they can pay some non-essential welfare checks. As much as I disagree with Obama the guy isn't an idiot, nor is the government as a whole. Of course they'd cut welfare. It would in fact be the first thing cut.

 

As long as they continue to get their meals served by Halliburton at $50/hamburger, why not? Damn good hamburgers, those.

 

Apparently you've never had one of those hamburgers. Let's just say that McDonalds is actually better quality.

What is more interesting is the bacon that we get from our arab contractors. Let's just say that they refuse to prepare or serve pork, so the bacon is . . . well, I'm not sure what it is, but after a few months you can convince yourself it tastes a little like bacon.

 

Now I'm absolutely certain that I'm never going to go to afghanistan with the military. Military service without bacon? hell no!

 

Why would anyone willingly work for an employer and not get paid when they've been paid all along? Is the question patriotism vs pay?

Debt ceiling has nothing to do with anyone getting paid. It's just a credit limit extension to allow more future borrowing up to a new threshold. Increasing the debt to pay bills, that's probably what you were intending to state.

The military will be last to go no matter what. No country would weaken security of its sovereign state just to pay for social well being. This last showdown was proof because they wanted to be certain troops would be paid no matter what happened politically.

 

So Halliburton gets $50 for a hamburger that is worse than McDonald's? Gawd, the situation is worse than I thought. Can a serviceman say "keep the hamburger, just give me the $50."

 

That would be nice, but no chance. The big cost is transportation. According to some federal law somewhere, all meat provided for service members must be USDA certified food. That means it all has to be produced packaged and shipped from the US. Fedex doesn't deliver to most of the places that troops hang out in Afghanistan, so a company that provides food to deployed military members has to procure the food in the US, transport it halfway around the world - and prepare it in the middle east. They have to buy or charter aircraft for the transport, hire people to do the cooking and cleaning, buy equipment that will work in the other country, etc. Some of the food doesn't preserve well (like milk, fresh fruit, etc.) so that has to be transported very regularly.

It is an expensive supply chain. $50 for a hamburger seems high, but considering the added costs I'm not sure anyone could do it for much less.

 

The question, I'm afraid, is whether it is a top priority of the Democrats who control it.

Actually, seeing we have been content to allow our civilian managers to demoralize the military by various expedients for decades, that is nowhere near as certain as you think.

It's not a question of his intelligence, at least as the term is commonly used. It's a question of his priorities, which you may rest assured are utterly devoid of any harmony with the objectives stated in the Preamble of our Constitution.

Where you get that idea is a mystery, since Obama will not suffer the presence of anyone who is not a useful idiot in the Executive branch if he can help it, and the Legislative and Judicial branches are both pretty much controlled by leftards.

 

The people in the US government are not mentally retarded, or atleast the people with the most power aren't. They know what consequences will follow by huge cuts to the military, and thus they know that the military is of much more import than welfare can ever be. And that is also true of the public at large. mind that I'm not talking about just cuts now, but the collapse of the military in favour of funding welfare programs. POlitically unrealistic, and everyone knows it.

 

Again, you assume facts not in evidence...

...but even taking all this as true, it hardly matters if they have reason to believe the consequences felt by them will bear none of the unpleasantness of those felt by the American populace at large.

 

Well how much should a hamburger cost when the company has to travel where it did and serve them under the circumstances it did and give me an audited report saying that hamburgers cost $50 ea.

 

Ha, ha, ha, ha ...
no