Junior troops would see a 5.5% pay bump under a Senate plan unveiled Wednesday, setting up a clash with a House proposal to give enlisted members a significantly larger salary boost.
Under the Senate Armed Services Committee’s draft of the annual defense policy bill, service members of all ranks would get a 4.5% pay raise next year. Troops in the paygrades of E-1 through E-3 would get an extra 1% on top of that, for a total 5.5% raise.
With the Senate’s more modest proposal and the White House’s objection to any targeted boost to junior enlisted pay before an administration study on military compensation is finished, the fate of the House plan to give E-1s through E-4s a 19.5% pay hike next year is growing shaky.
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While senators did not go as far as the House in their initial version of the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, the Senate proposal nods to growing concerns that pay for junior enlisted troops has not kept pace with the economy. Senators argued that budget caps approved by Congress last year prevented them from proposing a higher raise for junior enlisted personnel.
“We’ve done everything we can to put as much money into pay raises for our active-duty military and particularly for the E-1s through E-3s, the lowest paid,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who chairs the Armed Services Committee’s personnel subpanel,…
