It is common knowledge that if a student has no money, but wants to go to school, the military is the choice to make. The military has lots of jobs and most of them don't promise certain death. All a teenager has to do is sign over their rights and lives to an organization for a few years, go through training, become self-less, and possibly go into combat. Whats not to love about a secure paycheck, occupation, and life-skill training?
Well, just recently this secure means of making a living is in danger.
In recent years, the government has been trying to downsize our military in order to reduce our government deficit. Particularly on my campus, this has made a huge impact. Many of the students that desired to go to a private medical school chose to enlist in ROTC because they otherwise couldn't attend due to financial circumstances, but with the recent cut backs fewer of the students are being accepted in the program and those who are rejected are forced to pay the money back or transfer out of the university. The only upside to this situation was that those who were selected to be in the program had a secure future financial future in front of them. However, as of yesterday, this too seems to be at risk.
The democratic and republican parties have come to a stale-mate about the new financial budget. The conversation has degraded so much, that the president is having to plan on putting government organizations on shut down. What does this mean for our military? Well, persons enlisted in the active and reserve duty receive their paychecks from the government. They, like every other American, have to pay mortgage, tuition, car payments, bills, family expenses, etc. The shut down of the government would mean that all of these men and women who have given their time and effort to our country would not receive over-due paychecks for weeks. They would be working without pay. This could cause many of them to default on house payments and car payments, ruin their credit, or possibly make them lose some of their possessions.
What is our government coming to? I am personally appalled at our governments failure to cooperate and take care of those persons who protect it. I am not certain where our government will end up in the next few months. Perhaps a revolution is in store. I do not know what needs to be done, but something needs to change because the biases of government representatives are impairing so many people's lively hoods. This is the exact opposite of what governments are supposed to do. Perhaps, both sides should to concede to each other and start treating fellow representatives like persons instead of "the enemy," but this currently seems to be too much to ask from representatives of a Christian Democratic World Power.
