Piece of pie anyone?

So today in the news... they are announcing cuts to the military. Can you believe it? I even heard that they may increase the contributions military personell will make to their health insurance. This after the President said he would freeze the wages of all federal employees except active duty personel.

I am going to make a bold prediction that these cuts to our brave service men and women have as much chance of sticking as the Republicans have of repealing Obamacare. While we're on that topic, did you ever wonder how words like welfare and Obamacare could come to be terms of derision or have negative connotations? How did we get to a point where looking out for the welfare or the health care of people was a bad thing?

So the federal government wants to tighten the grenade belts of our active duty folks? The argument you will hear is that we should make an exception for them, after all, they are on the front lines and they put themselves in harm's way for our freedom, and they make it so that we can be safe at home, and...

I wonder why the same argument isn't made for maintaining the salaries of social workers. They are on the front lines as well. They take care of people we don't want to deal with on a daily basis too. Now, they don't shoot those people- they help them. But social work, I dare say, may have as much to do with saving our country from disaster as the military does. What did you say? How can you compare social work to invading foreign countries? That's like comparing apples and oranges.

Okay, what about police and firefighters? Don't they put their lives on the line too right? Should we continue to be incredibly generous with their pensions or should we start to tighten their vests and coats a bit too?

Have we left anyone out in this squeeze? There's those pesky nurses I suppose. They are on the front lines, taking care of us as well. Should they be an exception to this universal belt tightening? Teachers? Garbage removers? Waitresses?

Which special interest group do you favor?

When the cuts come down on the military and really stick- I mean, if we actually see the federal military budget go down in any significant way, then we know that the country is really ready to cut the deficit. Until then, it's just one special interest group against another for their piece of the pie.