The FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) made it out of the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday night, and there are some really attractive bits in there if one is junior enlisted or looking to join up. Quality of life for servicemembers, a bipartisan interest in a Congress as closely divided as the 118th, is the focus of the NDAA, and it’s about time. Dilapidated barracks with mold and other infestations, military families requiring food stamps to get by, and a basic-needs allowance program for which needy families successfully qualified for 0.8 percent of the time have been embarrassing episodes for the armed services that are not well-equipped to manage things that aren’t materiel.

Committee chairman Mike Rodgers (R., Ala.) summarized the bill for National Review:

In the FY25 NDAA, we’re giving junior enlisted servicemembers a 19.5% pay raise; improving unaccompanied housing; expanding access to specialty medical providers; boosting access to childcare; and providing support for military spouses seeking employment.

The most eye-catching figure in the NDAA is the 20 percent pay increase for personnel E-1 to E-4 — those in the lower ranks who’ve been enlisted somewhere between a few days and several years (a plurality of the military). If not factoring in room and board, these servicemembers make between $24,000 and $36,000. For a single guy living in the barracks, he can make it work. But for a soldier with a family and a place off-base, $30k is tight. While there are no doubt some salts who point out that if the Navy wanted a sailor to have a wife, they’d have issued him with one, the reality is that beggars can’t be choosers with such a profound recruitment deficit. A bit of extra scratch does best by junior enlisted, who see the least positive effect from the year-over-year flat-percentage increases to military pay.

While the pay increase is a fine thing, I’m most interested to see what the barracks improvements (unaccompanied housing) involve. Having slummed in a few choice accommodations with and without Navy approval, the best by far was the Pacific Beacon at 32nd St. Base on the dry side. It was a privatized arrangement — heaps nicer than the Navy-operated Snyder Hall just down the road that evoked dread similar to Johannesburg’s slum tower, Ponte City. For a service as fastidious as the Navy, having access to an operational washer and dryer is arguably more important than incremental raises insofar as quality of life is concerned. Living in the Charleston swamps, the washers would work but the dryers wouldn’t, and the water there would give a load of laundry a funky smell within an hour if not dried. Showing up to class the next day to get dressed down for a funky uniform that couldn’t be helped has a way of making the military so much more unpleasant than it needs to be.

It’s good that Congress has taken the years of junior enlisted complaints and bundled them into a bill that looks to palliate the most disagreeable aspects. We need volunteers, and it’s in the national self-interest to look after those volunteers. One cannot sail, fly, or consume paper-covered wax tubes without manpower, after all.