House leads the charge to boost pay, housing, quality of life for armed service members
By Lindsey McPherson
June 25, 2024
The Washington Times
The lowest-ranking enlisted military members are paid less than fast food workers and many other entry-level employees in the private sector, and they often turn to federal subsidies and local donations to feed their families, according to a House panel.
The bipartisan group of 13 House Armed Services Committee members spent roughly a year investigating compensation and living standards in the military and putting recommendations together on how to improve the quality of life for service members.
“I got tired of going to bases and being shown the food pantry,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican and former Navy pilot involved in the effort, told The Washington Times. “We can do better than that.”
The proposals focus on boosting pay and supplemental benefits, expanding access to quality housing, child care and health care and assisting military spouses looking for non-service jobs.
The lawmakers hope it will make military service more attractive amid widespread recruitment and retention issues.
“It hurts my heart when I have parents come up to me and say, ‘You know, I was in the Navy, but I would never let my children be in the military now,’” Ms. Kiggans said. “We have to change that mindset.”
All 31 of the panel’s recommendations were included in the annual defense policy bill the Armed Services Committee drafted and the House recently passed.
“This is a historic piece of legislation because of what we’re doing on quality of life,” House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican, said. “We’re putting more into that area than we have in seven decades.”
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One of the panel’s top recommendations was to increase base pay for the most junior enlisted members — E-1s to E-4s — by 15%. The House defense bill also provided a 4.5% pay increase for all service members, providing a combined increase of nearly 20% for those in the four lowest pay grades.
Yet, the proposal to increase junior enlisted pay is opposed by the Biden administration, which said in a statement on the defense bill that it “strongly opposes making a significant, permanent change” before a separate quadrennial review of military compensation is complete.
The administration also expressed concern the proposed increase could lead to “pay compression,” which is when there is little difference in pay among employees with varied tenures and experience levels.
Ms. Houlahan said that while she is generally aligned with the Biden administration, she disagrees with that assessment. Because Congress has for years provided percentage pay raises for all service members, that has increasingly expanded the income gap between the junior and senior enlisted members, she said.
“It’s not compressed at all. In fact, that’s what we’re trying to address,” Ms. Houlahan said. “We’re trying to make it so that there’s a basic wage for people to be able to exist, so that they can afford their housing, afford their food, afford health care, all of those things.”
Mr. Bacon was more harsh, saying, “The president looks pretty stupid opposing this.”
The panel also sought to address cost of living concerns with adjustments to various allowances service members receive on top of their base pay, including ones for housing and basic needs. For example, it recommended raising the threshold at which military families qualify for the supplemental monthly basic needs allowance from 150% of the federal poverty level to 200%.
Since 2019, the basic housing allowance has covered 95% of average housing costs for families that live off base. The House defense bill would restore that to 100%, which panel members said is especially important for service members based in high-cost-of-living areas.
For service members who live on base, the legislation would require the Defense Department to catch up on roughly a decade of underfunded maintenance projects.
“We were irritated — and that’s an understatement — to hear the military had been moving 20% [of funds appropriated for] the barracks and housing towards weapon systems,” Mr. Bacon said.
Ms. Kiggans said service members are questioning whether to remain in the military because the living conditions are not what they should be.
“They come back to a barracks room that is dark and moldy, has no privacy, no kitchen,” she said.
Since the government has not done a good job keeping up with housing maintenance, the bill expands opportunities for the Defense Department to contract with private housing providers to run and maintain base units, following a pilot program launched in San Diego and Norfolk.
Another issue the panel sought to address is the lack of access to affordable child care, which is one of the reasons Ms. Houlahan separated from the Air Force.
“There was a six-month waiting list for the base child care, and I couldn’t afford that six-month gap,” she said. “It was my entire paycheck to be able to pay for child care for those six months.”
The defense bill would address child care provider shortages on base by requiring the Defense Department to pay more competitive rates and allow child care staff to bring their first child to work with them for free. It also would provide more funding to eliminate wait lists for fee assistance, a subsidy to help offset costs of securing child care off base when on-installation facilities are full.
The panel proposed several health care benefit improvements, like expanding access to specialty providers and setting a standard of care for behavioral health appointments. And it pushed to expand programs that help military spouses find jobs.
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