Sometimes, I can’t help but marvel at the sheer audacity of the president’s mendacity. It’s almost impressive how some can be so willfully dishonest about policies that matter. Take this morning, for example, during a brief Bush speech in the Rose Garden.
“The House and Senate are now scheduled to leave for their August recess before passing a bill to support our troops and their missions. Even members of Congress who no longer support our effort in Iraq should at least be able to provide an increase in pay for our troops fighting there.”
Bush has gall; I’ll give him that. Some men would have the decency to tell the truth about military pay during a war and in front of veterans and military families. But not our George, who lied through his teeth.
Troops don’t need bigger pay raises, White House budget officials said Wednesday in a statement of administration policy laying out objections to the House version of the 2008 defense authorization bill.
The Bush administration had asked for a 3 percent military raise for Jan. 1, 2008, enough to match last year’s average pay increase in the private sector. The House Armed Services Committee recommends a 3.5 percent pay increase for 2008, and increases in 2009 through 2012 that also are 0.5 percentage point greater than private-sector pay raises.
The slightly bigger military raises are intended to reduce the gap between military and civilian pay that stands at about 3.9 percent today. Under the bill, HR 1585, the pay gap would be reduced to 1.4 percent after the Jan. 1, 2012, pay increase.
Bush budget officials said the administration “strongly opposes” both the 3.5 percent raise for 2008 and the follow-on increases, calling extra pay increases “unnecessary.”
Bush didn’t just oppose bigger pay raises for troops rhetorically, he put it writing, issuing a Statement of Administration Policy (.pdf), which “strongly opposes” an additional 0.5% increase in troops’ pay, an additional $40 per month for widows of slain soldiers, additional benefits for surviving family members of civilian employees, and price controls for prescription drugs under TRICARE (the military’s health care plan for military personnel and their dependents).
The Democrats’ policy was to increase benefits, including pay, for the troops and their families.
“We ask our troops to risk their lives for our nation,” said Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel. “We ask their spouses to raise families and make ends meet without them as they serve. The President is a lot of talk when it comes to supporting the troops and their families. It’s easy to say you support our troops, but actions matter and when it comes to the treatment of our troops and their families, our resources must match our rhetoric.”
Indeed, two days after Bush announced that he would veto the Democratic version of the Defense authorization bill because Dems were offering the troops too much, Dems implored the president to reconsider. He did not respond.
Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a veteran who served in Iraq, denounced Bush on the House floor six days after the veto threat.
“[T]he fact is, is that those privates who are making $17,000 a year, those privates that are leaving their wives, their kids at home, many of whom have to survive on food stamps, those privates who saw what we did in the defense bill, who said that’s great, 3.5% pay increase, not even $1,000 more a year, a couple hundred dollars a year, the President of the United States said, private, ‘Thank you for your service to your country, but that’s too much of a pay increase.’ Mr. Speaker, I hope the people at home are watching. The President of the United States said a couple hundred dollars more a year to a private making $17,000 a year is too much.”
And yet, there was Bush this morning, insisting that lawmakers would be letting the troops down unless they “provide an increase in pay.”
The man is incapable of feeling shame.