More disturbing the suicide rate of services members has gone up.
As well as the hardships placed on servicemembers families....
I'm not sure that many Americans realize that when a reservist gets called for active duty, they get military pay and their employer is not obligated to pay them their salary during this time... military pay is usually substantially less than their regular pay check.
Thus... if they were just getting by before, the hardship is even worse.... not only is there an emotional burden of being separated for a year or more and the serious concern of getting killed... there's also the financial struggle that the spouses and children have to endure.
There are many service member's famillies who had to seek out help from local churches, charities, community services such as food stamps and even wellfare, and still there are debts to pay.. and creditors threathening ligation (typical American attitude! We don't care what your spouse is doing for the country... just give us our money)
Really is this a burndon our service members should endure?
Congress is making an effort to help service members out by authorizing the government to pay the difference between the military pay check and the civil pay check with admendments to the Soldiers & Sailors Civil Relief Act. Section 206 (50 U.S.C. App. § 526)
However, they're slow to act.... again... the Republican congress and White house is quick to go to war, quick to get 87 billion in aide for Iraq...
yet the service members who are making the sacrificies and making this all possible... are getting the shaft by their conservative government..because their conservative government is concerned about over paying service members. Yet we can over pay Iraq 20 billion? And Iraq has oil they can use a collateral.
Why can't they just do the right thing and not worry about if one service memeber gets $1 too much... one of the issues holding up the relief is the arguement the Bush adminsitration is making that only members that are Overseas in Iraq or Afghanistan should recieve compensation... However, I say whether a service member is state side or overseas... for every service member overseas, we need 10 state side to support them in logistics, training, command and controll... what ever!!
It's all the same effort!!!
Please write your congressmen and ask them to do the right thing... they should expedite authorization of hardship pay and compesation with the same speed at which they authorized to fund this bogus war and the WarBucks they are giving to Bush and his civilian buddies who are profiting from this illegal act of mass murder and left.
http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20030914/frontpage/99897.shtmlhttp://www.legalpr.com/Washington%20Post%20-%20Steve%20Camp%20Garedere%20Civil%20Relief%20Act%20of%201940.htmlhttp://www.illinoislawhelp.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home.dsp_content&contentid=83http://www.mshq.net/guides/militarypay.shtmlhttp://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/03/10/4/17568527.cfmhttp://www.afsa.org/congress/legupdate040403.cfmhttp://www.honolulu-pacific.feb.gov/cola/updatelocality.dochttp://www.phillysheriff.com/SSCRA.HTM
