Our proxy war in Ukraine with Russia, rising tensions with China, and Congress’ attachment to the military-industrial complex allowed the birth of the biggest, ugliest defense budget seen in generations. This year Congress overwhelmingly passed a record-setting $858 billion defense budget and did so in and almost celebratory manner.
You’d think within that monstrosity of a bill that most of the members of Congress who couldn’t read even if they had wanted to, there would be some money in there to improve servicemembers’ lives.
There was a pay raise. The highest pay raise the military has seen in 20 years, in fact. But hold on.
At 4.6%, that puts the pay raise well below the current inflation rate of over 6%; that’s barely saying much to servicemembers other than ‘Here you go, now your situation is just slightly not as terrible as it was before.’
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