With the debt-ceiling agreement now law, some members in Congress are focused on assuring the proposed 5.2% pay raise for military members in 2024.
President Joe Biden proposed the pay raise in the 2024 budget he submitted to Congress in March.
The debt-ceiling deal, which Biden signed Saturday, limited spending levels for next year's defense budget at the same amount of money the administration requested.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., in a letter dated June 5, urged the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee to ensure that this year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) endorses a 5.2% pay raise for troops, Military.com reported.
The senator’s office told the outlet that it had not heard anything to suggest the pay raise was in jeopardy. Gillibrand, though, wrote to committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., and ranking member Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., "to make sure it doesn't happen."
"As you know, people are the armed services' greatest asset," wrote Gillibrand, a member of the Armed Services Committee, Military.com reported. "As you also know, we are facing a recruiting crisis, making retention of our service members' expertise and experience more important than ever.
"Meanwhile, 24% of service members face food insecurity, and chronic unemployment and underemployment of military spouses compounds the financial difficulties service members and their families face," the letter continued. "We cannot afford to make budgetary trade-offs that negatively impact those in uniform."
Gillibrand expressed concern that parts of the president's budget request could be sidelined in favor of "congressional priorities" as lawmakers work to stay within the cap on government spending.
"I am writing to ask that, despite the fiscal restraints imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, this pay increase be included in the chairman's mark of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024," she wrote.
The rate of the pay raise is set by a separate law that ties it to what's called the Employment Cost Index, essentially putting the pay bump on autopilot unless Congress intervenes.
That means a 5.2% increase will take effect in January unless Congress passes a bill that specifically lowers the raise.
Military.com reported that an Armed Services Committee spokesperson declined to comment on Gillibrand’s letter or how the panel plans to handle the pay raise when it considers its version of the NDAA later this month.
To get defense hawks in Congress to agree to speed up the Senate's normally laborious process for voting on bills to pass the debt-ceiling deal, chamber leadership consented to moving on a supplemental spending bill for Ukraine and other defense needs that would skirt the debt limit deal's cap, Military.com reported.
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