The lowest-ranking enlisted military members are paid less than fast food workers and many other entry-level employees in the private sector, and they often turn to federal subsidies and local donations to feed their families, according to a House panel.
The bipartisan group of 13 House Armed Services Committee members spent roughly a year investigating compensation and living standards in the military and putting recommendations together on how to improve the quality of life for service members.
“I got tired of going to bases and being shown the food pantry,” Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Virginia Republican and former Navy pilot involved in the effort, told The Washington Times. “We can do better than that.”
The proposals focus on boosting pay and supplemental benefits, expanding access to quality housing, child care and health care and assisting military spouses looking for non-service jobs.
The lawmakers hope it will make military service more attractive amid widespread recruitment and retention issues.
“It hurts my heart when I have parents come up to me and say, ‘You know, I was in the Navy, but I would never let my children be in the military now,’” Ms. Kiggans said. “We have to change that mindset.”
All 31 of the panel’s recommendations were included in the annual defense policy bill the Armed Services Committee drafted and the House recently passed.
“This is a historic piece of legislation because of what we’re doing on quality of life,” House Armed Services Chairman Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican, said. “We’re putting more into that area than we have in seven decades.”
But the House will need to convince the Senate, which is considering similar but far fewer quality-of-life proposals, and President Biden, who opposes changing the pay structure for junior members.
Mr. Rogers tapped Air Force veteran Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican, to lead the Quality of Life Panel that developed the recommendations included in the House bill.
Mr. Bacon told The Times in an interview that he approached Mr. Rogers in August 2022 — as Mr. Rogers was campaigning to chair the Armed Services panel the following year — about the number of military members who have to rely on food stamps because their pay isn’t high enough to cover basic needs.
That conversation sparked more research, which uncovered other issues such as inadequate housing allowances, underfunded maintenance of base housing, high rates of unemployment among military spouses and wait lists for child care.
The Quality of Life Panel was born. Mr. Bacon said it was one of the most bipartisan groups in Congress and panel members “loved” the work.
“Most of us are our veterans, and we feel we have an obligation to those who come behind us to get this right,” he said. “It’s a passion.”
Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, the panel’s ranking member and fellow Air Force veteran, said in a separate interview that keeping military service voluntary — the U.S. has not used a mandatory draft in 50 years — requires investment in the people who sign up.
“This is an incredibly generous thing that a human being does to join our military and to commit their lives to service … to the nation,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said. “And we need to respond with the generosity that we’re capable of.”
One of the panel’s top recommendations was to increase base pay for the most junior enlisted members — E-1s to E-4s — by 15%. The House defense bill also provided a 4.5% pay increase for all service members, providing a combined increase of nearly 20% for those in the four lowest pay grades.
Yet, the proposal to increase junior enlisted pay is opposed by the Biden administration, which said in a statement on the defense bill that it “strongly opposes making a significant, permanent change” before a separate quadrennial review of military compensation is complete.
The administration also expressed concern the proposed increase could lead to “pay compression,” which is when there is little difference in pay among employees with varied tenures and experience levels.
Ms. Houlahan said that while she is generally aligned with the Biden administration, she disagrees with that assessment. Because Congress has for years provided percentage pay raises for all service members, that has increasingly expanded the income gap between the junior and senior enlisted members, she said.
“It’s not compressed at all. In fact, that’s what we’re trying to address,” Ms. Houlahan said. “We’re trying to make it so that there’s a basic wage for people to be able to exist, so that they can afford their housing, afford their food, afford health care, all of those things.”
Mr. Bacon was more harsh, saying, “The president looks pretty stupid opposing this.”
The panel also sought to address cost of living concerns with adjustments to various allowances service members receive on top of their base pay, including ones for housing and basic needs. For example, it recommended raising the threshold at which military families qualify for the supplemental monthly basic needs allowance from 150% of the federal poverty level to 200%.
Since 2019, the basic housing allowance has covered 95% of average housing costs for families that live off base. The House defense bill would restore that to 100%, which panel members said is especially important for service members based in high-cost-of-living areas.
For service members who live on base, the legislation would require the Defense Department to catch up on roughly a decade of underfunded maintenance projects.
“We were irritated — and that’s an understatement — to hear the military had been moving 20% [of funds appropriated for] the barracks and housing towards weapon systems,” Mr. Bacon said.
Ms. Kiggans said service members are questioning whether to remain in the military because the living conditions are not what they should be.
“They come back to a barracks room that is dark and moldy, has no privacy, no kitchen,” she said.
Since the government has not done a good job keeping up with housing maintenance, the bill expands opportunities for the Defense Department to contract with private housing providers to run and maintain base units, following a pilot program launched in San Diego and Norfolk.
Another issue the panel sought to address is the lack of access to affordable child care, which is one of the reasons Ms. Houlahan separated from the Air Force.
“There was a six-month waiting list for the base child care, and I couldn’t afford that six-month gap,” she said. “It was my entire paycheck to be able to pay for child care for those six months.”
The defense bill would address child care provider shortages on base by requiring the Defense Department to pay more competitive rates and allow child care staff to bring their first child to work with them for free. It also would provide more funding to eliminate wait lists for fee assistance, a subsidy to help offset costs of securing child care off base when on-installation facilities are full.
The panel proposed several health care benefit improvements, like expanding access to specialty providers and setting a standard of care for behavioral health appointments. And it pushed to expand programs that help military spouses find jobs.
All 31 of the panel’s recommendations authorized in the defense bill will cost roughly $5 billion to implement.
“That will be our next fight,” Ms. Kiggans said of convincing congressional appropriators to pony up the money.
Reconciling the authorizing language in the House defense policy bill with the Senate’s will also be a challenge.
The Senate Armed Services Committee has yet to publicly release its version of the defense bill, which the committee marked up in a closed-door session earlier this month. A summary shows it is considering similar proposals to boost pay and housing, but overall far fewer quality of life measures than the House.
“We do give a [pay] bump to some of the junior enlisteds like they do — not as big a bump,” Senate Armed Services member Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat, said. “All of these seem to me to be the kinds of things that are not going to be hard to negotiate.”
Senate Armed Services ranking member Roger Wicker, Alabama Republican, said they’re open to the House suggestions, including providing a more generous pay increase for junior service members, but that it will require “a give and take.”
The House members said they plan to fight to keep as many of their proposals in the final negotiated version of the bill as they can.
Ms. Houlahan, who like most Democrats voted against the House defense bill because of provisions added on the floor to ban access to abortions, transgender health care and diversity initiatives, said she expects those partisan provisions to fall out of the final bill and much of the bipartisan panel’s recommendations to remain.
“I think a significant amount of the quality of life panel’s work will survive that whole process,” she said.
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.