On Thursday, Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-TX) tweeted that Congress had passed a bill that would provide U.S. troops with the biggest pay increase in eight years.
Did you know that the NDAA Congress just passed will give our troops the LARGEST pay raise they’ve seen in EIGHT years? pic.twitter.com/ZEHTiRwHog
— John Ratcliffe (@RepRatcliffe) November 16, 2017
Is Ratcliffe’s claim true?
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018 authorizes multiple funding efforts for the Department of Defense, including base funding, mandatory defense funding, and much else.
The bill was introduced in June of this year and the conference report (one of the last stages in the process) was agreed to by the House on Tuesday and awaits approval from the Senate.
In its current form, the bill would supply a 2.4 percent pay increase for U.S. military members and would prevent the president from being able to reduce their pay.
These pay raises for military members are determined using the Employment Cost Index (EIC), which measures private sector wages. The military raise was established as the EIC plus one half a percentage point from 2000 to 2006. The NDAA for 2004 determined that after 2006 the military pay raise would be the same as the EIC, however, the House has chosen to increase the raise beyond the EIC in previous years.
As the NDAA bill currently stands, it has only been passed by the House, not the Senate, but it would provide a pay raise larger than any since 2010—when the increase was 3.4 percent.
This 2.4 percent increase being considered is based on the current EIC. For 2017, the pay increase was 2.1 percent.
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