Military Special Needs Network
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The Elephant in the Room
Amanda from ConfessionsFromHH6 is a friend of MSNN. She is one of our oft-featured Guest Bloggers. If you don’t follow her, you should. Right now. I’ll wait.
Today, Amanda writes about the looming fiasco that we all know as sequestration. Like many of you, I live in a large military community. While the locals voice their concerns over jet noise (the sound of freedom, baby!) and crash zones, base traffic and other concerns, the truth of the matter is that the “Department of Defense is the single largest employer in Hampton Roads.” (Source: http://hamptonroadsperforms.org/profiles/regional/HRPDC-BenchmarkingReport2010.pdf) Without our spouses and our families, this place would see a drastic “lifestyle” change. Think about it – how many facets of income generation would be affected by the impending furloughs and layoffs? Everything from the housing market to entertainment, the auto sales industry, travel, groceries…EVERY INDUSTRY WILL BE HURT BY SEQUESTRATION.
The trickle down will be brutal. Already our local newspaper is reporting that BAE, could layoff thousands. More critically, The Virginian-Pilot reports, “In Hampton Roads, the pay cuts could affect most of the 39,000-plus Navy and Marine Corps civilian employees in the region who work in a wide range of occupations, from doctors and nurses who staff Navy health clinics to engineers, accountants and maintenance workers at local bases.” For our Special Needs families, this is just more bad news. Wait times for follow up appointments can be months. Initial appointments in some Military Treatment Facilities (MTFs) specialty clinics have wait times of 6 months or more. This is unacceptable. Our families are not just “collateral damage.”
In Amanda’s words:
“Sequestration may not affect you directly, but it may affect your community or someone you know. For the military, this means that anyone who is not an active duty soldier will take 22 UNPAID days and a 20% PAY CUT. This means DoD school personnel, our health care workers, youth services, and everyone else who helps make our posts and bases run smoothly and efficiently. We’ve already experienced budget cuts over the last several years. I live on a very small post, and it means over 800 people affected. It means the local economy will take a hit without those people putting the money back into it they usually do. I’m holding my breath waiting to see how services for our military families are affected. Tell your Congresspeople this infighting they are doing is unacceptable. They need to compromise on a budget before March 1. Quite frankly, even putting this stress on our military families going down to the wire is unacceptable.”
I encourage you to read the article she shared from The Stars and Stripes (click HERE to go there now.). Below you will find a couple of additional resource links. Let’s get informed. Heck, let’s get angry – and let’s let our lawmakers know that this is not a choice. This is not okay.
- Tricare Related: http://blog.al.com/breaking/2013/02/tricare_users_could_see_longer.html
- http://thehill.com/blogs/defcon-hill/operations/283981-pentagon-tells-congress-it-will-furlough-800k-civilian-workforce
- http://washingtonexaminer.com/3-hour-airport-security-waits-under-sequester/article/2522078
Let us know if you experience any change in coverage of services, if you are a contractor family and how this will impact you.
-Kelly
Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net
2 comments on “The Elephant in the Room”
Comments, discussion and insight always welcome!
Military Special Needs Network 
I already posted this on Facebook, but we are already being denied referalls to Urgent Care, and being told to utilize military ER’s to “save money.” My other concern, if anyone knows the answer to this. How will this affect schools? Emma is in a DOD school, will the school week be shortened?
Hey Kim – I don’t know specifics, but in those articles I posted, I did read that DoD school staff is not immune from furlough. I’ll keep digging and see if I can come up with anything.