Armed Forces News

With deployment tempos at an all-time high, and with more than 50,000 Reserve and Guard troops activated and thousands more tabbed for activation, and with the possibility of war with Iraq, the White House Office of Management and Budget reportedly has proposed a cut in basic pay increases in 2004 from 3.7 percent to as little as 2 percent. This would fly in the face of a congressional mandate that requires military raises through 2006 to be half a percentage point greater than private-sector pay raises. The ECI-plus-1/2 formula was designed to bring military pay more comparable to the private sector, even though the pay gap will still be some 7.4 percent after the Jan. 1, 2003 raises. The reaction by the Military Officers Association of America (formerly TROA) to the proposed cap? “Forget it.”