View Full Version : Pentagon requests plan to close stateside commissaries
BMT (RIP)
11-21-2013, 11:14
The military resale industry already has reminded Hagel in a letter that, at Camp Pendleton, Calif., Aug. 7, President Obama told Marines that closing commissaries is “not how a great nation should be treating its military and military families.”
http://www.stripes.com/news/us/pentagon-requests-plan-to-close-stateside-commissaries-1.253985
BMT
ghp95134
11-21-2013, 11:21
...Gordy revealed three ideas DeCA weighed in recent months that would lower patron savings but preserve stateside stores. One would double the patron surcharge, from 5 percent to 10 percent of the cost of goods sold. A second would increase commissary prices worldwide by 2 percent to 3 percent, enough to cover agency costs for shipping goods to overseas stores....
Well, if the surcharge is raised .... I then wonder if the commissary will be more expensive than COSTCO? I shop at both and find the dairy products at the commissary generally are cheaper, but not by much.
--ghp
The DoD has been thinking about this for many. Here is one thread started before.
http://www.professionalsoldiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=42336&highlight=commissaries
The defense budget lost 20 percent of its funding, with the caveat that pay for the boys couldn't be touched. which is 25% of the budget. So that's actually quite a bit more than a 20 percent cut to operations, maintenance, training, and procurement. The brass doesn't want to cut force structure (yeah, we'll see), so something has to give. You can say "cut procurement, we don't need new stuff", but the stuff we do have is worn out from 12 years of constant use and has to be refurbished or replaced. Cut training? Good plan. Operations costs are what they are.
I love my commissary as much as the next guy, but something somewhere is going to give, and if it isn't commissaries then in may be YOU. They are going to ax 2000 Captains this year alone. I don't have numbers for us enlisted folk but it's also not pretty. Do the math on this.
Once a program like the commissary is cut you ain't never going to see it again no mater how much funding the military gets in the future.
People? If it's not an emergency you can build back up like the military did since 9-11.