Republicans criticized President Biden’s “crazy” and “politically suicidal” opposition to giving junior enlisted members a nearly 20 percent pay raise amid recruiting problems.
on a tuesday statement Regarding opposition to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the White House Budget Office said a plan to give low-ranking troops a 19.5% raise in the basic salary next year would be too expensive.
“Joe Biden managed to become a billionaire on a civil servant’s salary,” Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wis., told DailyMail.com. “And he’s snatching food out of the mouths of our young enlistees.”
Van Orden said that while he was an active-duty Navy Seal, his wife had to use WIC coupons to keep their children fed.
‘It is disgusting and reprehensible. I couldn’t feel any stronger about it. That’s silly.’
After bipartisan lawmakers spent months studying quality of life issues in the military, the House decided to offer a 4.5 percent across-the-board pay raise and an additional 15 percent raise for enlisted youth in its annual bill of Pentagon policy.
In a statement Tuesday about opposition to the House version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the White House Budget Office said a plan to give low-ranking troops a 19% raise .5% in basic salary next year would be too expensive.
Republicans criticized President Biden’s “crazy” and “politically suicidal” opposition to giving junior enlisted members a nearly 20 percent pay raise amid recruiting problems.
The Senate version of the bill does not currently include the additional 14.5 percent raise for junior enlistees.
Some early-career enlisted service members can earn as little as $24,000, not including their housing allowances and free health care. The House plan would ensure service members earn at least $30,000 a year.
“It’s completely crazy,” Rep. Mike Garcia, who has led the fight 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, whether from a political or political perspective.”
“They’re actually doing everything they can to say no to this and explain why it’s a bad idea and it’s completely irrational and politically it’s really suicidal.”
Former President Donald Trump brought up the issue in a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday, according to Garcia, saying he thought it would be a “top issue.”
‘(Trump) said everyone knows we are having challenges in our military right now. So why wouldn’t he support granting them the equivalent of the minimum wage that the rest of the universe has in our country?
“This is a wage increase aimed at levels E1 through E4, who currently make literally $12 an hour, which in California is about half of what fast food workers make at McDonald’s.”
The planned wage increases would cost more than $24 billion over the next five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
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.”
A quarter of the military population experienced food insecurity between 2018 and 2020, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
More than 22,000 active-duty soldiers used the food stamp program in 2019, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the Government Accountability Office.
“You have one in eight ballistic guys on staff at food and water banks, particularly in D.C., San Diego,” said Bacon, a member of the Armed Services Committee and a retired Air Force officer. “And we thought we worked hard to determine if the price would have to be to exceed that threshold.”
The United States entered this year with one of its smallest defense forces in more than 80 years, as the number of active-duty troops fell to less than 1.3 million as the Defense Department faces serious recruiting problems.
Recent recruiting goals were not met in the Army, Navy and Air Force, although the Marine Corps and the newly created Space Force met their goals.
White House officials said the proposal “would lead to pay compression in some parts of the military enlisted base pay schedule” and said it should be delayed until a full review of military compensation rules is completed next year.