Republicans are pushing back against President Biden’s “insane” and “politically suicidal” opposition to giving junior members a nearly 20 percent pay raise amid recruitment issues.
On a Tuesday rack On opposition to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the White House Budget Office said a plan to give low-level troops a 19.5% base pay increase next year would be too expensive .
“Joe Biden has managed to become a multi-millionaire on a civil servant salary,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., told DailyMail.com. “And he’s snatching food from the mouths of our junior men.”
Van Orden said that while he was an active duty Navy Seal, his wife had to use WIC coupons to feed their children.
‘It’s disgusting and reprehensible. I can’t think more highly of it. That’s nonsense.’
After bipartisan lawmakers spent months investigating the quality of life in the military, the House of Representatives decided to offer a 4.5 percent across-the-board pay increase and an additional 15 percent raise for juniors included in their annual Pentagon policy bill.
In a statement Tuesday on opposition to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the White House Budget Office said a plan to give low-level troops a 19.5% base pay increase next year giving would be too expensive.
Republicans are pushing back against President Biden’s ‘insane’ and ‘politically suicidal’ opposition to giving nearly 20 percent pay raises to junior enlisted members, amid recruitment woes
The Senate version of the bill currently does not include the additional 14.5 percent increase for juniors.
Some military enlistees early in their careers can earn as little as $24,000, not including their housing allowance and free health care. The House plan would ensure service members earn at least $30,000 a year.
“It’s completely insane,” Rep. Mike Garcia, who has led the push for better military pay, told DailyMail.com of Biden’s position. “I can’t understand what the rationale is and in what universe it would make sense, either from a policy or political perspective.”
‘They are really doing everything they can to say no to this and explain why this is a bad idea. It is completely irrational and even politically suicidal.’
Former President Donald Trump raised the issue Wednesday during a meeting with Republicans in the House of Representatives, Garcia said, saying he thought it would be a “leading issue.”
“(Trump) said: Everyone knows we’re facing challenges in our military right now. So why not support getting them on the equivalent of the minimum wage that the rest of the universe has in our country?’
“This is a pay increase aimed at levels E1 through E4, who are currently literally making $12 an hour, which in California is about half of what fast food workers at McDonald’s make.”
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the targeted wage increases would cost more than $24 billion over the next five years.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., called the White House opposition “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard come out of (Biden’s) mouth.”
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, a quarter of the military population experienced food insecurity between 2018 and 2020.
According to the Government Accountability Office, more than 22,000 active-duty troops took advantage of the food stamp program in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available.
“You have one in eight ballistic guys employed at food and water food banks, especially in D.C., San Diego,” said Bacon, an Armed Services Committee member and retired Air Force officer. “And we thought we had worked hard to figure out what the price would have to be to get them above that threshold.”
The US entered this year with one of its smallest armed forces in more than 80 years, with the number of active-duty troops falling to fewer than 1.3 million and the Defense Department facing serious recruitment challenges.
Recent recruitment targets in the Army, Navy and Air Force were missed, although the Marine Corps and the newly created Space Force achieved their goals.
White House officials said the proposal “would lead to pay compression in some parts of the military base pay table” and said it should be postponed until a full review of military compensation rules is completed next year.