House leads the charge to boost pay, housing, quality of life for armed service members

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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, a House panel has reported.

The bipartisan group of 13 House Armed Services Committee members investigated military compensation and living standards for about a year and developed recommendations to improve service members’ quality of life.

“I got tired of going to bases and being shown the food pantry,” Rep. Jennifer Kiggans, Virginia Republican and former Navy pilot, told The Washington Times. “We can do better than that.”

The recommendations include boosting pay and supplemental benefits, expanding access to quality housing, child care and health care, and assisting military spouses looking for jobs outside the service.

The lawmakers said such changes would help the military recruit and retain troops.

“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 Armed Services Committee’s annual defense policy bill, which the House recently passed.

“This is a historic piece of legislation because of what we’re doing on quality of life,” said House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, Alabama Republican. “We’re putting more into that area than we have in seven decades.”

The House provisions must be approved by the Senate, which is considering similar but far fewer quality-of-life proposals, and President Biden, who opposes changing the pay structure for junior service members.

Mr. Rogers tapped Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska Republican and Air Force veteran, to lead the panel.

Mr. Bacon told The Times in an interview that he approached Mr. Rogers in August 2022 about the number of military members who rely on food stamps because their pay doesn’t cover basic needs. At the time, Mr. Rogers was campaigning to chair the Armed Services Committee.

Research uncovered other issues such as inadequate housing allowances, underfunded maintenance of base housing, high rates of unemployment among military spouses and waitlists for child care.

The list provided the impetus for the quality of life panel. Mr. Bacon said it was one of the most bipartisan groups in Congress and 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 of Pennsylvania, the panel’s ranking Democrat and an Air Force veteran, said in a separate interview that keeping military service voluntary requires investment in the people who enlist.

The U.S. has not used a mandatory draft in 50 years.

“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,” Ms. Houlahan 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 by 15% for the most junior enlisted members: E-1s to E-4s. The House defense bill also provides a 4.5% pay increase for all service members, a combined increase of nearly 20% for those in the four lowest pay grades.

The Biden administration said in a statement that it “strongly opposes making a significant, permanent change” in junior enlisted pay before a quadrennial review of military compensation is complete.

The administration also expressed concern about “pay compression,” or little difference in pay among employees with varied tenures and experience levels.

Ms. Houlahan said she generally aligns with the Biden administration but disagrees with that assessment. She said Congress has provided percentage pay raises for all service members for years, increasing the income gap between the junior and senior enlisted members.

“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 said, “The president looks pretty stupid opposing this.”

The panel addressed cost-of-living concerns by adjusting various allowances on top of base pay, including for housing and basic needs. It recommended raising the threshold for military families to qualify for the supplemental monthly basic needs allowance from 150% to 200% of the federal poverty level.

Since 2019, the basic housing allowance has covered 95% of average housing costs for families living off base. The House defense bill would restore it to 100%. Panel members said the full allowance would be especially important to service members based in areas with high living costs.

For service members who live on base, the legislation would require the Defense Department to catch up with 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 living conditions raise questions among service members about whether to remain in the military.

“They come back to a barracks room that is dark and moldy, has no privacy, no kitchen,” she said.

The bill expands opportunities for the Defense Department to contract with private housing providers rather than the government to operate and maintain base units. A pilot program was launched in San Diego and Norfolk, Virginia.

Ms. Houlahan said one reason she separated from the Air Force was the lack of access to affordable child care.

“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 pay more competitive rates to child care providers and allow staff to bring their first child to work without charge. It also would provide more funding to eliminate waitlists for fee assistance and a subsidy to help offset the costs of securing child care off base when on-installation facilities are full.

The panel proposed several improvements to health care benefits, such as expanding access to specialty providers and setting a standard of care for behavioral health appointments. It also pushed to expand programs that help military spouses find jobs.

All 31 of the panel’s recommendations authorized in the defense bill cost roughly $5 billion.

Persuading congressional appropriators to fund the recommendations “will be our next fight,” Ms. Kiggans said.

Reconciling the authorizing language in the House defense policy bill with the Senate legislation will also be challenging.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has not publicly released its version of the defense bill, which it marked up in a closed-door session this month. A summary shows proposals to boost pay and housing but far fewer overall quality-of-life measures than the House version.

“We do give a [pay] bump to some of the junior enlisteds like they do — not as big a bump,” said Senate Armed Services Committee member Tim Kaine, Virginia Democrat. “All of these seem to me to be the kinds of things that are not going to be hard to negotiate.”

Sen. Roger F. Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on the Armed Services Committee, said members are open to the House suggestions, such as more generous pay increases for junior service members, but they would require “a give and take.”

The House members said they would fight to keep as many of their proposals as possible in the final negotiated version of the bill.

Like most other House Democrats, Ms. Houlahan voted against the defense bill because of provisions added on the floor to ban access to abortions, transgender health care and diversity initiatives. She 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.