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Senate panel OKs 3.9 percent raise for 2009

A Senate committee, siding with military and veterans’ groups rather than the Pentagon, has approved a 3.9 percent military pay raise for 2009, a move that would continue to close the perceived gap between military and civilian wages.

The Senate Armed Services Committee also rejected for the third consecutive year a Pentagon effort to increase Tricare fees for military retirees and their families and for all beneficiaries using the Tricare retail pharmacy benefit.

The disagreements with the Pentagon are part of the 2009 defense authorization bill, which the committee approved Wednesday in what is only the first step in a long legislative process.

The House Armed Services Committee begins writing its own version of the defense policy bill next week.

The 3.9 percent pay raise is 0.5 percentage points more than requested by the White House and is likely to draw complaints that the estimated $350 million cost of the larger raise could be better spent on higher priorities.

However, military and veterans’ groups, including the 33 member associations of the Military Coalition, urged lawmakers not to appear cheap in a time of war.

The gap between military and private-sector pay, when measured by comparing pay hikes since 1981, stands at about 3.5 percent, down from the peak of more than 13 percent in 1996, when Congress began mandating bigger military raises.

With the 3.9 percent increase, the pay gap would be reduced to 3 percent.

The committee’s refusal to go along with proposed Tricare fee hikes comes as no surprise, as lawmakers have sided with associations representing the people who would pay the larger fees — in some cases, three times larger — in telling the Pentagon that it must exhaust all other options for reducing health care costs before ordering beneficiaries to pay more.

The bill also orders the Defense Department to recalculate Tricare premiums for reservists because a government audit found fees are 72 percent too high for single members and 45 percent too high for married members.

The bill also creates two new benefits. One would be a new 500-pound weight allowance for spouses to move job-related books and equipment at government expense, a travel benefit long sought by military families.

The other would be a test program requested by the Pentagon to allow service members to take up to three years off active duty for personal or family reasons with the right to return at the same pay grade and level of responsibility at the end of their sabbatical.