4. Department of Defense · Notable · Needs Congress
Support legislation raising wages and family allowances for enlisted personnel
Printed page 104 4. Department of Defense
“Support legislation to increase wages and family allowances for active-duty enlisted personnel. No uniformed personnel should ever have to rely on social benefits like as food stamps or public housing assistance.”
What has happened
- Partially done
The FY2027 President's Budget requests "a pay raise of 7 percent for all military personnel ranked E-5 and below, 6 percent for E-6 to O-3, and 5 percent for O-4 and above," describing it as "far higher than the standard annual military pay raise." A formal administration request weighted toward junior enlisted personnel — the wage half of the Quote, asked for but not yet enacted.
- Partially done
The FY2026 NDAA sec. 622 raises the family separation allowance from $250 to $300 a month, sec. 624 requires transparency and an alternative-methodology study for the basic allowance for housing, and sec. 663 expands the pilot program to increase access to food on military installations — the food-insecurity concern the Quote raises. It carries no increase in basic pay beyond the automatic adjustment.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Two objects — wages, and family allowances. Congress delivered a family allowance increase; the wage increase exists as a formal administration request in the FY2027 Budget, and a formal administration request counts as attempted on that half.
This item sits in the page 103–104 personnel cluster, whose shared instruments are EO 14151, EO 14183, the FY2026 NDAA titles V, VI and IX, and the Secretary of Defense’s 2025 personnel memoranda — nearly all of which live on Department of War pages that refuse automated reads. One negative search covered the whole cluster.
- Action
- expand
- Object
- active-duty enlisted wages and family allowances
- ID
- 177