The Committee is committed to ensuring that pay and allowance programs are equitably applied to the seven Uniformed Services. Increase personnel strengths in order to achieve current mission requirements. The force is unduly stressed due to inadequate numbers of personnel to support the current operations tempo resulting in a negative impact on the quality of life of uniformed services personnel. The services do not have sufficient numbers to sustain deployments, training exercises and other operational commitments. DoD's recent practice of proposing additional personnel cuts to free up money for other defense programs is unacceptable as these reductions only further overburden service personnel and exacerbate readiness and retention problems.
Competitive pay is especially important to maintaining the all-volunteer military.
TMC also supports further reform of DoD pay tables to address shortfalls for NCO's and warrant officers. This also affects warrant officers in all services. Accelerated relief is especially important to junior personnel who live off base and do not qualify for other supplemental assistance. Supporting revised housing standards to make them realistic and appropriate for each pay grade. The percentage of members with dependents continues to increase and moving is very stressful.