A House panel has voted to give the military a 1.9 percent pay raise next January. That would be a half-percentage point higher than what the Obama administration wanted simply to match private-sector wage growth.
The House armed services subcommittee on military personnel also endorsed increases next year in hostile-fire pay and family separation allowance, enough to restore the relative value of these payments to what they were in 2004 when they last were adjusted.
But the same panel, marking up the personnel portion of the fiscal 2011 defense authorization bill Wednesday, signaled the money tap is off for expanding entitlements to reserve personnel, disabled retirees or widows.
In voting to continue a 12-year string of annual military raises set higher than wage growth nationally, the subcommittee ignored pleas from Defense officials not to drive up personnel costs this way and thereby squeeze dollars available for equipment, supplies and other readiness needs.
But committee chairwoman Rep. Susan Davis, D-Calif., said the extra half-percent raise will continue to narrow a pay gap with civilian peers, which stood at 13.5 percent in 1999 but will be down to 1.9 percent in January.
Days earlier, outside pay experts told the Senate personnel subcommittee that the “gap” argument ignores the hefty gains made to military housing allowances over the last decade. Military pay, they said, already is very competitive, particularly in this distressed economy.
If housing allowances are included in pay comparisons, said a Congressional Budget Office analyst, military compensation has exceeded private sector pay growth by 11 percent since 1982, the year that the Reagan administration declared “pay comparability” had been achieved.
But Davis, in outlining the key personnel initiatives endorsed by her subcommittee, indicated 9 years of war allow other facts to hold sway. It is, she said, “painfully apparent that the extraordinary high operations tempo has exacted a high penalty on our service members and their families.”
Support for one more extra bump in military pay was unanimous on the 14-member subcommittee. Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina, the ranking Republican, acknowledged “growing opposition” to adding an extra half-percent “on the assertion that military pay now exceeds that of comparable civilian jobs. That’s a false comparison. I would challenge anyone to find a civilian job that has the same set of requirements and risks” as military personnel face.
As to the assertion that personnel costs are crowding out funds for other defense priorities — a case made by Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs — Wilson said the answer is bigger defense budgets, not “asking military personnel to take less.”
Both Davis and Wilson expressed regret that dollars couldn’t be found for other personnel priorities involving expansion of entitlements for reservists, disabled retirees and certain widows drawing survivor benefits.
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