In the late 19th century Rudyard Kipling published “Tommy” as part of Barrack-Room Ballads, about the way he saw England treating her troops between campaigns. The following is an excerpt:

Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep,

Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;

An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit,

Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.

After some 10 years of warfare, America’s all-volunteer force hasn’t broken; the 1 percent of Americans who served and are serving are heroes in hero families. Of course administration and defense leaders began planning for strategic budgetary cutbacks. But when they reached the “uniforms that guard you while you sleep,” they decided they could buy them at “starvation cheap.”

Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta delivered the military a Valentine’s Day card when he presented the defense budget. See if it sounds like bait and switch.

The bait: “There are no [military] pay cuts,” said Panetta. “We've created sufficient room to allow full pay raises in 2013 and 2014.

The switch: “However, we will provide more limited pay raises beginning in 2015, giving troops and their families fair notice and lead time before changes take effect.”

The bait: The budget requests nearly $50 billion for health care costs, he said. “To control the growth of these costs, we're recommending increases in health care fees -- in co-pays and deductibles -- that are to be phased [over] four to five years. None of the fee proposals apply to active duty service members, and their families will not pay increased premiums.”

The switch for retired servicemembers. The new proposal speaks of “tiered” fees that would vary depending on the member’s retired pay and civilian earnings after retirement.

A news release of Feb. 13 by the Military Officers Association of America (MOAA), stated: “The new budget plan would dramatically increase [health care] enrollment fees and deductibles for retired military families younger than age 65. Some will see nearly a fourfold increase over five years; from $520 per family to $2,048. After 2017, annual increases would be tied to a medical inflation index. The new, tiered, annual enrollment fee would rise to $475 by fiscal 2017 for retirees and family members age 65 and older, for whom the military TRICARE plan serves as second-payer to Medicare.”

In a column of Feb. 16, retired Air Force Colonel Steve Strobridge of MOAA wrote: “Let’s recognize this proposal is uniquely discriminatory toward the military community. No other federal health care beneficiary pays income-based premiums.” This includes retired U.S. presidents, secretaries of defense, members of Congress, and all other federal retirees. “Means-testing health care fees also is rare in the private sector,” said Strobridge. “Why? Because it’s a benefit that’s earned by service to an employer or, in the military’s case, to the country.”

Strobridge added that means-testing is for “welfare programs, social insurance programs, and other unearned benefits that are provided as a government gift or “safety net” for those in need of assistance. “Military health care benefits most emphatically are not a gift,” he said. 

If Congress accepts the proposal to reduce military pay raises beginning in 2015, troops needed for the all volunteer force might find other employment as they’ve done in the past. If lawmakers break a bond with today’s military retirees by imposing means testing on their health care, retirees can do little about it. But active-duty troops who see promises broken by their government might leave the service -- at the career stage when they are most needed. They will see through the bait and switch. 

You talk o' better food for us, an' schools, an' fires an' all:

We'll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.

Don't mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face

The Widow's Uniform is not the soldier-man's disgrace.

For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!"

But it's "Saviour of 'is country," when the guns begin to shoot;

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

But Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!