The US military needs the entire pay scale to be overhauled for the enlisted service members. While giving very small increases in pay every year is made it isn’t enough. The pay scale doesn’t keep up with the private sector. The pay for service members hasn’t kept up with inflation and because of this many military service members and there families are struggling to get by. Over the last few years the small increases that were given didn’t even equal to the amount of inflation. Service members were told to apply for food stamps, but many don’t qualify for food stamps due to BAH being included so that isn’t an option. Military service members don’t want a hand out they want to be paid a fair livable wage and they are not. They are serving our country and have earned and deserve to be paid a livable wage. Currently they are doing a survey to decide if military service members need to be paid more. The answer is yes and it shouldn’t take this long to complete. It doesn’t take a survey to know they aren’t being paid a livable wage. Service members need help now. We should not have spend millions of tax dollars trying to figure out what all those that serve already know.
Also when service members retire their base pay should not be cut in half. Just because they retire after 20 or more years of service doesn’t mean life got cheaper for them. Retired service members deserve to receive there entire base pay that they retire out at. If can afford to send our tax dollars to Ukraine we can afford to pay active duty and retires the pay they have earned and deserve.
If you want to have better recruitment, morale, and retain already trained serve members than please fix the pay to be a livable wage that supports the high cost of todays living for active duty and those that retire. Our military deserves better!