With the occupation of Iraq producing steady U.S. casualties, straining troop rotations, and attacking troop morale, lawmakers have delayed until next year consideration of a Pentagon plan to taper the number of servicemembers eligible for the wartime pay raises enacted last April.

Defense officials wanted Congress in January to roll back a $150 hike in monthly Family Separation Allowance (FSA) and a $75 hike in Imminent Danger Pay (IDP). The increases would have been replaced by a matching rise in Hardship Duty Pay (HDP)—but only for military personnel assigned to Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Congress had agreed, personnel assigned to war zones would be shielded from a drop in pay and might have seen a slight increase. But tens of thousands of others—including mobilized reservists guarding the homeland and married shipboard sailors and Marines— would have seen their overall compensation fall by $75 to $225 a month.

Specifically, the FSA would drop from $250 a month down to $100 and the IDP from $225 to $150. Some Defense officials argued for the rollback in January to coincide with annual raises in military basic pay and housing allowances, which would help to mask the drop in special pays. But most enlisted members drawing the FSA and the IDP, and not assigned to Iraq or Afghanistan, would have seen their pay drop overall in the new year.

Defense officials waited until late summer to draft a replacement plan for the April FSA/IDP increases and then had difficulty getting it cleared by the White House's Office of Management and Budget to send to Capitol Hill.

By mid-October, House and Senate conferees working on President Bush's controversial $87 billion defense supplemental for operations and reconstruction in Iraq were wary of it, including a pay cut for some troops.

"There was general agreement that the whole proposal to convert these special pay increases into a kind of hardship duty pay bears further study,'' says an armed services committee staff member. 

Seeing the resistance to cutting special pays stiffening, Defense officials signaled that money would be found in the supplemental "to cover whatever we do,'' says the committee staff member. So the $87 billion supplemental funds higher the FSA and the IDP through September 2004.

Defense officials won't have an easy time selling their wartime pay replacement program even next year, the staff member suggests. Key senators, he says, "have not been particularly impressed'' with a plan that "will move in the direction of a sliding-scale hardship duty pay'' while rolling back the family separation allowance.

On Capitol Hill, he says, "There's a growing appreciation for the working spouse who suddenly finds herself [or himself] a single mother or father and needs more money for childcare, babysitting, lawn mowing, and alike. The gut reaction up here to that is very strong.''

That argues for making permanent last April's increases, particularly in the FSA. 

Defense officials opposed raising the FSA and the IDP last spring saying the payments, which Congress made retroactive to October 2002, are inefficient. David Chu, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, likened the FSA/IDP raises "to using a sledgehammer to hit a small nail.''

The FSA is paid to all servicemembers forced to live away from their families for more than 30 days. The IDP goes to those serving in any of scores of designated danger areas around the world. Extending the increases through fiscal 2004 adds more than $400 million to the 2004 budget.

But Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) criticized Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his comptroller, Dov Zakheim, for proposing a more targeted pay plan.

"How in the world do we justify activating all these guard and reserve [forces], removing them from their families and saying, 'If you don't happen to be assigned to Iraq or Afghanistan, we're going to revert back to $100 a month in Family Separation Allowance,' '' Durbin asked Rumsfeld during a hearing on the supplemental.

That doesn't square with administration rhetoric, he suggested. 

"How can that help morale,'' asked Durbin. "How can that say, beyond those speeches, that we really do care about these men and women?'' 


Tom Philpott is a freelance writer and syndicated news columnist. His column, "Military Update," appears in 48 daily newspapers throughout the United States and overseas.