When Ukrainian dictator Volodymyr Zelensky calls on the White House to beg for more money to prop up his corrupt regime, President Joe Biden is waiting at the front door, a U.S. taxpayers’ check in hand.
When GOP congressmen inserted a 15-percent pay raise for junior enlisted personnel in the armed services, Biden suddenly became a miser, pinching pennies like Old Man Potter.
Biden opposes the pay increase. Junior enlisted service members, he avers, have received a big enough raise in the last few years.
Republicans also want to shut down the Pentagon’s ever-growing diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy.
Prices Rocketing Up
Republicans inserted the pay increase into the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for two reasons: Pay for those junior enlisted members has not kept pace with civilian pay, and housing costs have risen so dramatically that the military’s housing allowance is way too low.
Thus, the 15-percent pay hike, along with bigger allowances for food and housing. As well, the bill would improve the cost-of-living calculations the government uses to determine military pay and allowances.
Biden “strongly opposes” the increase because, the White House claims, service members have gotten quite enough.
“In January, Servicemembers received a 5.2 percent basic pay increase, the largest since 2003, coupled with an average 5.4 percent increase in basic allowance for housing and a 1.7 percent increase in basic allowance for subsistence,” the White House claims:
The President’s FY 2025 Budget Request includes a basic pay raise of 4.5 percent. If the President’s FY 2025 request is enacted, Servicemembers will have received a 15 percent basic pay increase in just three years.
Maybe, but Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan wiped out those increases.
“Data from the Labor Department confirms that housing expenses, energy and vehicle maintenance costs have all increased by double digits since January 2021,” Fox Business reported today:
As of May, shelter costs are up 21.4%, home prices have increased 33.9% and rent is up 21.4%, according to indexes tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Mortgage rates on a 30-year fixed loan have shot up to an average of 6.99% as of June 6, 2024, from 2.77% in Jan. 2021 — a whopping increase of 152%, according to Freddie Mac.
Gasoline: Up 45 percent since Biden took office.
Electricity: Up 29 percent.
Food prices are also a killer, the Heritage Foundation reported in late May.
While paychecks have increased $150 a week, or 14.1 percent under Biden, Heritage reported, prices have risen 19.3 percent, meaning pay actually decreased $50. “Today’s larger paychecks buy less, and consumers are being squeezed by higher prices everywhere,” Heritage explained.
“Eggs are just one example of this phenomenon,” the report continued. Because they are inexpensive, Americans are eating more eggs than other meats, which has pushed egg prices up 40.9 percent.
“And eggs aren’t the only things at the grocery store that will induce sticker shock,” Heritage observed:
Prices of other consumer staples such as flour, sugar and butter have skyrocketed in price under Mr. Biden’s tenure, increasing 38.3%, 30.7% and 35.9%, respectively.
Americans’ incomes haven’t risen nearly as quickly as food prices have during the Biden administration, resulting from failed public policy.
In other words, the service members’ pay increase did nothing to assuage the baleful effects of Bidenomics.
Money for Comedian Zelensky; Service Members Can Cut Their Budgets
Meanwhile, the Daily Caller noted, Biden has wasted $175 billion “on aid to Ukraine and European security since 2022 — roughly one-seventh of the proposed pay hike for the junior troops, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.”
At $11,500 per Ukrainian household, Indiana GOP Representative Jim Banks told the Daily Caller, that funding is “shameful.”
“When accounting for inflation, the average American makes less today than when Joe Biden took office. The White House wants to block Republicans from giving our troops the raise they need to make ends meet in the Biden economy,” Banks said.
No More Pentagon DEI
Meanwhile, the GOP is trying to stop the Defense Department’s wasteful diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, also known as DEI. Aside from creating a hostile racial environment in the military since Biden landed in the White House, the Pentagon has been running something of a “gay” disco.
House Republicans have declared war on the Pentagon’s spending on those programs, Fox News recently reported.
Some amendments to the NDAA would eliminate the Defense Department’s Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and the Defense Advisory Committee on Diversity and Inclusion.
Others would ban DEI offices at the service academies and funding for “Pride Month” celebrations at “Pentagon-run schools.”
Another would require Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to explain how much the Pentagon wasted on “Pride Month” parties versus Memorial and Veterans day ceremonies.
Another five amendments, Fox reported, would stop the Pentagon from wasting tax money on “transgender” mutilation surgeries and “other gender-affirming care.”
Biden has been obsessed with forcing normal servicemen to accept “transgenders” in the ranks since Day 1 of his deranged administration.
That includes forcing normal women to shower with “trans women,” meaning men who pretend they are women.
