True or false? military salaries – President Trump tells troops big pay raise? What happened?
Early in my career, I told an opponent what I was going to do, and naively assumed he would believe it. Shortly, I learned he didn’t believe me, so he didn’t prepare for the result, was surprised when I came through, and taught me an interesting lesson. You can tell the truth, because they won’t believe you anyway. Hmm. That has served me well. I don’t have to remember what I said, because what it is, is what it is.
Much is being written about fake news, and fact checking the President Trump’s statements. One such appeared buried in a Deseret News story.
What is truth? Why Pontius Pilate’s question still resonates today. January 10, 2019.
Jennifer wrote ”‘’ Yet there is a widespread perception that truthfulness and honesty is losing ground as a common value, seen in the widespread dismissal of President Trump’s false statements (such as recently telling soldiers that they were getting a 10 percent raise, when the raise is 2.6 percent),” linking to a USAtoday 2018/12/28 fact check, which wrote ”U.S. military” ”2.6 % in 2019” and concludes ”the 2.6 %” ”obviously falls far short of the 10%.”
USAToday in turn linked to a Defense department site.
Linking to a Dod.defense.gov/News-release etc ”The budget:
• Provides a 2.6% military pay raise – the largest increase in 9 years
• Includes NO compensation cost share reforms in FY 2019. ” With a link to comptroller.defense.gov/portals/45/Documents. Which in turn summarizes pay and comp as follows
”Total Direct Appropriation Personnel 2018 $132 billion
Total Direct Appropriation Personnel 2019 $146 billion” Increase $14 billion, which is over the 10%. The President was correct. USAToday was wrong. DesNews goofed in quoting USAToday. AP goofed assuming no one would be able to follow the DoD information.
The full citations are below.
WASHINGTON – In his first visit to U.S. troops in a conflict zone, President Donald Trump drew cheers when he told troops he won them their first raise in 10 years and suggested it was a whopping one. Neither is true.
TRUMP: “You just got one of the biggest pay raises you ever received. Unless you don’t want it. Does anybody here? Is anybody here willing to give up the big pay raise you just got? I don’t see too many hands. Ah, OK. don’t give it up. It’s great. You know what? Nobody deserves it more. You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years. And we got you a big one. I got you a big one.” – remarks prompting cheers Wednesday at al-Asad Air Base in Iraq.
[USAToday continues] THE FACTS: He’s wrong about there being no pay increase for service members in more than 10 years and about their raise being especially large.
U.S. military members have gotten a pay raise every year for decades. As well, several in the last 10 years have been larger than service members are getting now – 2.4 percent this year and 2.6 percent in 2019. Raises in 2008, 2009 and 2010, for example, were all 3.4 percent or more.
Pay increases shrank during the following years as the administration struggled with congressionally mandated budget caps. Trump, aided by congressional action, did reverse the subsequent six-year trend that began in 2011 of pay raises that hovered between 1 and 2 percent. In 2017, service members got a 2.1 percent raise.
Trump has repeatedly told service members that they’re getting the biggest or only pay raise that they have received in 10 years or more. In May, for example, he told graduates of the United States Naval Academy: “We just got you a big pay raise. First time in 10 years.”
TRUMP: “You had plenty of people, they came up, they said, you know we could make it smaller. We could make it 3 percent, we could make it 2 percent, we could make it 4 percent. I said, ‘no, make it 10 percent – make it more than 10 percent.’” – remarks Wednesday at al-Asad base.
THE FACTS: Whatever he might have said at the time, the 2.6 percent for 2019 obviously falls far short of the 10 percent or more that he implied was achieved.
‘’The FY 2019 budget supports our service members and their families, providing a competitive compensation package that reflects the unique demands and sacrifices of military service. As the National Defense Strategy highlights, “The creativity and talent of the American warfighter is our greatest enduring strength, and one we do not take for granted.” The budget:
- Provides a 2.6% military pay raise – the largest increase in 9 years
- Includes NO compensation cost share reforms in FY 2019. Instead, the Department is focusing on internal business process improvements and structural changes to find greater efficiencies, such as modernizing our military health care systems into an integrated system
- Sustains family support initiatives by investing more than $8 billion in:
o Spousal/community support
o Child care for approximately 1 million military children
o DoD Dependent Schools, which are educating over 78,000 students
o Commissary operations at 237 stores
o Counseling support for service members and their families’’
https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2019/fy2019_m1.pdf
Total Direct Appropriation Personnel 2018 $132 billion
Total Direct Appropriation Personnel 2019 $146 billion
Increase in one year $14 billion. So there you have it. Do the math – 10%.
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