Guest Post by Mara Zebest
This news item seems to have gone unnoticed. It was among the Friday news dump before the start of the Labor Day weekend. Obama bypasses Congress once again by cutting the recommended 1.8 pay raise hike by almost half for the military.
Obama can’t seem to find the funds for our military (the only constitutional responsibility of the Federal government). However, Obama has no problem finding tax payer funds for the numerous lavish vacations, for IRS agent bonuses and IRS abuses, the tax dollars wasted on portraits of EPA’s Lisa Jackson, $2.2 million to study Lesbian obesity, and other taxpayer misuse of funds too numerous to mention.
NavyTimes reports the following:
In the midst of discussion about launching a U.S. military strike on Syria, President Obama moved Friday to reduce the size of January’s military raise.
Instead of the 1.8 percent raise due troops under a federal pay formula, Obama notified Congress he is exercising his powers as the government’s pay agent to cap the Jan. 1 increase at 1 percent.
The announcement came at 5 p.m. at the start of the Labor Day weekend after the news had been dominated for days about how the U.S. should respond to apparent use of chemical weapons against civilians by the government of Syria.
The pay decision is not unexpected and is not final, but it may diminish some support for a bigger military raise.
Obama’s 2014 defense budget sent to Congress in February included a 1 percent pay increase, a recommendation endorsed by the Senate Armed Services Committee but opposed by the House of Representatives. The defense authorization and appropriations bills approved by the House include the 1.8 percent across-the-board raise, the amount called for under the Federal Pay Comparability Act requiring raises to keep pace with private-sector wages.
The Examiner adds the following:
The Family Obama is figuratively still shaking the sand out of their shoes from last month’s Martha’s Vineyard vacation, and two short months prior to that, the clan enjoyed a $100 million African holiday.
What A 1% Pay Raise Looks Like…
If approved, a 1.0 percent raise equals $3.79 a week more (before taxes) for a newly joined member of the Armed Forces.
According to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service official website, the base pay for Pay Grade E-1 in all branches of the Armed Forces is $1,516.20 per month.
The Department of Health and Human Services’ Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (APSE) official website lists the poverty line for a single person at $11,490.00 per month.
As cited by USmilitary.about.com, the highest pay raise the uniformed services received between 1976 and 2009 was during the Reagan presidency, the 1982 pay raise of 14.3 percent. During his administration, the smallest pay raise he ever approved as 2.0 percent in 1988.
During the Obama years, his pay raise approvals for the Services have seen a steady decline as cited by CNSNews.com:
- 2009 – 3.9%
- 2010 – 3.4%
- 2011 – 1.4%
- 2012 – 1.6%
- 2013 – 1.7%
- 2014 – 1.0%
Read more.
