Hillary and Joe Biden were up front in the Rose Garden of the White House to Pump the 2003 Iraq War ... They were the main supporters of the Libya Fiasco
And exactly where in Ohio were you protesting Bush and Cheney's Iraq fiasco? Funny, I didn't see too many republicans carrying signs along with us. You WERE out there in the streets, right shermann?
President Donald Trump arrives at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Dec. 26, 2018. In a surprise trip to Iraq, he said that troops received their first pay raise in a decade under his leadership, an incorrect statement he has repeated often in the last year. (Andrew Harnik/AP
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s visit to Iraq this week brought with it another round of controversy surrounding White House claims about military pay, as the commander in chief again incorrectly claimed he provided the troops with their first raise in more than a decade.
“You haven’t gotten one in more than 10 years. More than 10 years!” he told a crowd of applauding service members during his remarks at Al Asad Air Base in Iraq on Wednesday. “And we got you a big one. I got you a big one.”
Trump has repeatedly claimed that troops hadn’t seen a pay raise during President Barack Obama’s time in the White House. In fact, troops have seen a pay raise of at least 1 percent every year for more than 30 years.
By: Ken Chamberlain
The president also appeared to claim he pushed for a 10 percent pay raise in 2019, even though the actual rate his administration publicly supported and eventually got approved was only 2.6 percent.
“[People said] we could make it 3 percent. We could make it 2 percent. We could make it 4 percent," he told the troops. “I said, ‘No, make it 10 percent. Make it more than 10 percent.’ Because it’s been a long time. It’s been more than 10 years. That’s a long time.”
The 2018 military pay raise, approved in Trump’s first year in office, was 2.4 percent. It was the largest the military had seen in eight years, but followed a federal formula matching the expected rise in civilian sector wages for the year.
In some cases over the last 10 years, the annual military pay hikes have been lower than those comparable salaries, leading to a gap in the wages of troops and their non-military peers. But military pay has increased annually every year dating back to the early days of President Ronald Reagan’s administration.
“They had plenty of people that came up, they said, ‘You know, we could make [the military raise] smaller,’” he said.
Trump’s initial pay raise proposal for 2018 was only 2.1 percent, which would have matched the final pay raise passed during the Obama administration. Lawmakers overrode that proposal by Trump, approving the higher 2.4 percent mark.
For junior enlisted troops, this year’s 2.6 percent pay increase amounts to about $670 more a year in pay. For senior enlisted and junior officers, the hike equals about $1,300 more. For an O-4 with 12 years service, it’s more than $2,300 extra next year.
Trump told the deployed troops that their increased salaries were well deserved. He noted that the fiscal 2019 defense budget totals $716 billion, a significant increase over the previous year, and promised that in fiscal 2020 the figure will go “even a little bit higher.”
Just two months ago, Trump proposed trimming the defense budget back to $700 billion in fiscal 2020 before military and congressional leaders lobbied him to aim higher in his budget negotiations.
“We can’t play cheap with our warriors or military,” Trump told the crowd. “We can’t play cheap with victory. And we’re not going to.”
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