Vets: Keep One Eye on Your Pension in '25

Promises are cheap, and sometimes must be fought for

It was 11 years ago yesterday that a black Escalade pulled up in front of our house in the Boston suburbs at 4 AM. It took me to a studio where I sat in front of a camera and did my best to advocate for my fellow veterans (and myself) for just about 6 minutes.

My late friend Aaron Burgstein had helped orchestrate this appearance, though he never admitted it. He wanted me to think I’d created the opportunity all on my own.

The point of my media appearance, an unlikely thing, was simple. Congress had done what it does with alarming reliability, when it deigns to do anything at all.

Under a banner of "bipartisan responsibility," it had legislated a grim version of the exact opposite. Led by (R) Paul Ryan and (D) Patty Murray, a law *retroactively* siphoning money from earned, vested military pensions was passed.

Every retiree would lose thousands. The deal we’d been promised was altered. All we could initially do was pray they didn't alter it further.

Any way you want to think about it, the move was deeply unethical. It should have been illegal, we might argue. But there shouldn't need to be a law to prevent such a thing.

Thing is, as I often counsel others, Congress has incredible power to legislate just about anything. If enough lawmakers agree, they can change the Constitution itself. Those rights we hold dear and presume will always fall to us could have their legal guarantees eroded or removed. Protections could be stripped away.

Bear that in mind generally.

In this case, a retroactive pay cut was enacted, stripping away something already earned, promised, and foundational to the plans and prospects of several million retirees. It was as destabilizing as it was dishonorable.

Luckily, we were awake and undistracted enough to notice.

Partially, ironically, because popular media personalities were gloating about the reduction of “lavish” veteran benefits (an ass-kicking for another time ... don't trigger me), there was an inferno of resentment blazing through the veteran community. We were able to mobilize effectively.

Our demand was simple: Keep Your Promise.

A coalition formed. We pooled our connections, our influence, our access to powerful voices, and our collective resolve. We applied pressure to legislators and their executive branch counter-parties. We figured out what could be held at risk and communicated the appropriate threats to impact risk calculus. We played their game.

And in this miraculous case, Congress listened.

Actually, it wasn't a miracle at all.

What we had to do was create enough kinetic/potential risk to popularity, perceptions, donations, and votes to make repealing the cuts 1% more rational for legislators than riding out the storm and keeping them in place. We had to make repeal in their interest.

We had to become a huge pain in the ass. Which aligns to my natural aptitudes.

We did that, and the cuts were repealed.

I have no idea what impact, if any, was generated by this media appearance, my attempts at grass-roots advocacy with contacts on legislative and executive staffs, or my many breathless polemics, a couple of which went viral enough to give my old blog a new life.

What I do know is that politics, like football, is about the sum of marginal gains. Every percent of effort has meaning, because the margins of victory and defeat are super fine. There is seldom a decisive or overwhelming victory. More often, it's the little things, all together, that lift performance just enough.

It felt good to be part of something I believed in, and to share that effort with patriots unified by clarity of purpose, under-girded by clarity of principle.

Of course, it was a self-interested move on my part.

As a fresh retiree at the time, I stood to have about $120k sucked out of the family coffer over the course of my retirement.

So in personal terms, each of those 6 minutes was worth about $20k. Which means I was billing out at about $1.2M/hr.

Not bad for a fledgling 1L at the time, fresh from a 20-minute grilling over Pierson v Post at the hands of the legendary and savagely Socratic Bruce Mann.

In that foundational property case, a fox is wounded by a hunter before fleeing from public to private land. With each step it takes, the question of whether the hunter or the landowner "owns" the fox must be reconsidered. Clarity becomes ambiguity, eventually becoming clarity again.

(Aside for future law students: property disputes are not about ownership; they're about who has a greater claim, why, and the extent to which it can be proven.)

For veterans, it was a simpler fact pattern. They had hunted their pensions fair and square, killing and collecting their prey at 20 years and 0 days. There was no ambiguity about who was owed what or how to prove it. The question was purely moral.

In the moral universe of 2013, right prevailed and wrong lost. At least on this issue.

In the current moral universe, I'm not sure what would happen. Moral ambiguity, supported by dishonest narratives and false evidence, is fashionable.

If we find ourselves in this fight again, it will be less like hunting a fox and more like wrestling a pig. Everyone will get dirty, the pig will win, and the pig will have more fun.

So ... it is a time for healthy paranoia. When you hear narratives springing up, as they've already started to do, reach for your wallet. This piece in The Economist is not some random act of journalism. It’s the beginning of a new campaign to squeeze and pilfer and skim and outright rob. If I’m wrong, I’ll say so later. For now, let’s assume the worst.

And as we navigate whatever is coming, let's remember one simple rule. One thing which, if we successfully insist upon it, means we will at least do no more or less damage than we intend.

That rule is that anything impacting veterans can be *prospective* only. No retroactive pay or benefit cuts for those who have already done their bit under specified terms.

No broken promises. No betrayals. I needn't delve into why because it's just wrong, and everyone gets that. So let's skip the “yeah, but” bullshit and just put an unbreakable seal on what people who have already done their duty are entitled.

Of course, I don't recommend screwing with the future in this regard either. But that horse has bolted, with a watered down retirement plan, crumbling infrastructure, overstretched and undermanned units, and benefits that are making recruitment a challenge.

Eventually, our appetite for conflict will once again exceed our resources, and we'll break ourselves again, eventually turning to conscription to address any genuine defense threats which occur after our brokenness can no longer be denied.

Let's hope my hard-earned cynicism is wrong. Because the last thing this world needs is me going on TV again. Especially after a decade of treadwear which included 49 dog years in a Fortune 5 pressure cooker.

I don't think the link below will work anymore, but give it a shot if you have a few mins to spare and like the sound of nails on a chalkboard.

And if some more capable friend finds a better link, please drop in the comments. Posterity demands it. :-)

https://www.foxnews.com/video/2978559571001...

Promises are likely to get cheaper in 2025. There is no guarantee government will keep them. Frederick Douglass was spot-on when he said “power concedes nothing without a demand.”

Keep your radar active and your powder dry for what promises to be an interesting time ahead.

TC is a retired US Air Force officer, former Amazon ops director, and independent writer.