The recommendation on boosting paychecks is part of the final report from the House Armed Services Committee's military quality-of-life panel.
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The military's most junior service members should get a 15% hike in their base pay in order to "restore real value" to military pay, a key bipartisan congressional panel formed to improve the lives of troops said Thursday.
The recommendation on boosting paychecks is part of the final report from the House Armed Services Committee's military quality-of-life panel, a group of Republican and Democratic lawmakers that spent months analyzing service members' pay, housing, health care, child care and spouse employment.
The panel hopes to use the report to push improvements for troops this year. It also calls for a raft of other changes: increased allowances for housing and food insecurity; fully funded barracks renovations; exploring barracks privatization; offering more competitive pay for child care workers; evaluating health care access standards; and making permanent a pilot program for fellowships for military spouses, among other recommendations.
Hopefully this new pay raise is indexed to the inflation rate.
Here is a summary of the
article:
The article by Rebecca Kheel, published on April 11, 2024, discusses the recommendations made by a bipartisan congressional panel aimed at improving the lives of military personnel. The House Armed Services Committee's military quality-of-life panel, led by Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Chrissy Houlahan (D-Pa.), analyzed various aspects of military life, including pay, housing, healthcare, child care, and spouse employment.
The panel's most notable recommendation is a 15% increase in base pay for the military's most junior service members (E-1 through E-4) to restore real value. The panel expressed concern that basic pay has not kept pace with inflation since 2020 and that junior enlisted members have seen a decline in real wages compared to higher ranks.
Additionally, the panel called for increased housing allowances (BAH) from 95% of housing costs to 100%, updating the Pentagon's method for calculating BAH, and expanding eligibility for the Basic Needs Allowance from 150% of federal poverty guidelines to 200%.
The panel identified housing affordability as a major concern and noted that military services are only funding facilities sustainment at about 80% of what's needed. The panel recommended Congress mandate the services to track and report the total funding required for facilities maintenance, with a particular focus on barracks. There was also interest in exploring privatized barracks throughout the panel's work.
The panel made several recommendations to improve child care access, focusing on alleviating staffing shortages by ensuring employees receive competitive wages. The Defense Health Agency was recommended to evaluate access standards for urgent referrals for specialty behavioral health care, expand access to certain specialties without a referral, and survey specialties with shortages of providers.
The panel also looked at ways to alleviate the high unemployment rate for military spouses. Recommendations include making permanent a pilot program that provides 12-week paid fellowships to spouses in various industries, giving the Pentagon permanent authority to negotiate agreements for military spouses to use their professional licenses across state lines, and requiring states to comply with a federal law recognizing most professional licenses when service members and their families move for a permanent change of station.
At least some of these recommendations are expected to be included in the Armed Services Committee's annual defense policy bill, though budget constraints may impact their implementation.
