Senate backs 3.4 percent raise for 2010 - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

Senate backs 3.4 percent raise for 2010

A 3.4 percent across-the-board military pay raise for 2010 appears to be a lock after a Tuesday morning announcement by the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman of bipartisan support on his panel for the increase.

The hike would take effect next January and continue to close the gap between average military and civilian pay.

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said support for troops, their families and veterans is so strong today that he doesn’t see any way Congress could provide the more modest 2.9 percent military raise proposed by the Obama administration.

Support for troops goes further than just next January’s raise, Levin said in comments at a breakfast meeting with defense reporters.

Asked whether he would be looking to make cuts in military benefits as a way to hold down defense costs in the future, Levin said that would be the last place he would look for reductions because support for service members is so strong in Congress and with the American public.

“I would do nothing to detract from that,” he said.

Levin said he and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the armed service committee’s ranking Republican, jointly signed a letter on defense budget recommendations that endorses the 3.4 percent military raise, which is 0.5 percentage point above last year’s average private-sector pay increase.

If approved, this would mark the 11th consecutive year that Congress approved pay increases that are big enough to close the gap that grew between 1980 and 1998, when raises for service members were capped at less than raises in the private sector.

The pay gap, once as large as 13.5 percent, has been shaved to 2.9 percent as a result of a decade of military raises that have been slightly larger than average private-sector increases.

The existence of the pay gap is a matter of some dispute. The Defense Department believes that any remaining gap between military and private-sector pay was eliminated two years ago after several adjustments in the military pay tables, and that service members now receive pay that is comparable to their private-sector peers with similar responsibilities, education and experience.

But military and veterans groups believe that the pay gap, measured by comparing average annual military and private-sector raises, remains, and have made closing it one of their top priorities.

What makes the 3.4 percent raise for 2010 a virtual lock is that Democrats and Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee previously announced that they didn’t think the 2.9 percent raise proposed by President Barack Obama was enough, and also recommended a 3.4 percent increase.

The two armed services committees are responsible for drafting the annual defense policy bill, which authorizes military programs, including the amount of the pay raise. If both committees agree on the size and timing of the raise — as they now do — and authorize it in their versions of the 2010 defense bill, the only way it could be derailed would be for someone to mount a legislative attack on the bigger raise by trying to amend the bill.

Levin’s view that the American public, which disagrees about so many things, “really want us to support our troops, their families and veterans,” indicates that any attempt to reduce the raise would be an uphill battle.

The two committees are expected to begin writing their versions of the 2010 defense authorization bill in June, with a goal of having the measures would work their way through the legislative process — including a final reconciliation of differences — by fall.

The pay increase would take effect Jan. 1, 2010.