New bill would increase combat pay - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

New bill would increase combat pay

A lawmaker says a trip to Afghanistan to visit U.S. troops has inspired him to continue pushing for an increase in hazardous duty pay, hostile fire pay and family separation allowance.

Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., has reintroduced what he calls the Combat Act of 2011, which would increase hazardous duty pay and hostile fire pay to $260 a month and family separation allowance to $285 a month. This would result in monthly increases of $35 in hazardous duty pay, $10 in hostile fire pay and $35 in family separation allowance.

McNerney said troops in Afghanistan “talked about the struggles they face providing for their families while they are away from home and in dangerous conditions” and they “asked me to work on increasing pay.”

His bill is HR 1110, and it has the support of the Military Officers Association of America, the National Military Family Association and the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

The Defense Department is almost finished with a year-long study of military pay that will include recommendations for revising combat-related compensation. In a statement for the record submitted March 17 to the House Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon’s top manpower official said the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation has finished its work and is in the process of briefing senior military leaders about its recommendations. The report will be forwarded to the White House by April 11.

The official, Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and management, did not provide any details on the recommendations, but said the report will recommend “improvements” that could be made “in how we compensate those sent into combat and how we compensate the Guard and reserve that is more consistent with their current and future use.”

The pay review also was tasked with looking at incentive pays for linguists, special operations forces, remotely piloted vehicle operators and mental health professionals, and at pay for wounded warriors and their caregivers and benefits for survivors.