Compromise defense bill to give 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted troops
The House and Senate Armed Services committees’ compromise defense policy bill released late Saturday night could give junior enlisted service members a 14.5% pay raise next year — a historic pay bump for troops in the ranks of E-1 through E-4.
Under the 2025 defense policy bill, all service members will get a 4.5% pay raise, which will take effect at the beginning of the year. Junior enlisted troops will receive an additional 10% pay bump, which will start in April, according to the legislation.
The 14.5% pay raise is not as high as the House-proposed 19.5% pay bump for junior enlisted service members in their version of the 2025 defense bill — the number is in line with recommendations from the House’s quality of life panel that spent months assessing the quality of life concerns impacting service members and their families and devising recommendations to meaningfully address issues such as service member pay, housing and child care.
The 14.5% number, however, is significantly higher than the Senate-proposed 5.5% pay raise in their version of the bill. The White House previously said it “strongly opposed” any significant pay raise for junior enlisted service members before the Defense Department finishes its review of military compensation. The White House also said it would be too costly to raise junior enlisted troops’ salaries by 19.5%.
While the historic pay raise for junior enlisted troops is one of the most significant changes the compromise defense bill has introduced, many of the recommendations from the House Quality of Life Panel made it into the legislation as well.
The bill expands eligibility for the Basic Needs Allowance, a supplemental monthly payment, by increasing the income threshold for qualification from 150% of the federal poverty guidelines to 200%.
Additionally, the legislation will require the Defense Department to evaluate the Cost-of-Living Allowances (COLA) for military personnel to ensure they account for location-specific costs, including food, tolls, and other fees that may be charged within the United States or outside the continental U.S. And the bill will require the DoD to evaluate whether the current rates of the Basic Allowance for Subsistence, a monthly stipend for food, are adequate to address service members’ nutritional needs.
The bill also will allow families to ship and store up to two privately owned vehicles during a permanent change of station move.
Meanwhile, culture war provisions to reverse the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy, completely dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and bar Tricare from covering gender-affirming care for transgender service members that were introduced in the House version of the defense bill were dropped from the compromise bill.
However, despite some lawmakers’ efforts to expand access to in vitro fertilization for active duty military members and their families, the provision didn’t make it into the final bill.
The approved topline number of just a little under $ 850 billion adheres to the budget caps Congress set on both defense and non-defense discretionary spending in 2023, although the Senate was pushing for going past the spending caps in order to address modernization priorities.
However, the defense policy bill only sets policy and authorizes spending levels. Congress still needs to pass a separate full-year appropriations bill to fund the Defense Department in 2025. And while the defense policy bill sticks to the budget caps set last year, lawmakers could still push for higher spending during the appropriations process, which will most likely happen next year when the new administration ushers in.
The House is scheduled to vote on the compromise version of the legislation this week and the Senate is expected to vote at the end of the month.
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