Craw, Jaw, Law, Paw, Draw, Flaw...I could do this all day...

I have something stuck in my craw...

Well, first, I need to figure out what a craw is. No, really. Is it like a jaw?

Anyway, let's get to business...I can't say that I like many of the spending measures Barack Obama and the Congress have been proposing and passing left and right since January of 2009. I think it's ridiculous that an aerospace company received $15 million to monitor water in Ventura that it had just been fined for polluting, and the Napa Wine Train doesn't need $54 million. It just doesn't. It's a leisure train.

Why do we spend $300,000 for a GPS fitted helicopter to search for (wait for it) radioactive rabbit droppings? Why do we need to connect Microsoft's two campuses, currently separated by a highway, with an $11 million sky walk bridge? (Can't Bill Gates just pay for it?) Tax payers shouldn't be paying $389,000 for people in Buffalo to write down how much malt liquor and pot they consume, nor should they be responsible for a $6 million snow making facility...in Duluth, Minnesota.

But there is one bit of spending I could get behind - a pay increase for our military. Unfortunately, it looks like in this area Obama is being a little tight fisted. Surprising, considering his general outlook on stimulus and other government spending.

Obama has recommended (that's the key word, recommended) a pay raise of 1.4% for the 2011 fiscal year. That is the smallest pay increase that the military will have seen since it became completely voluntary in 1973. To put it in perspective, this past fiscal year the pay increase was 3.9%. This FY the pay increase is 3.4%.

This is, to me, disgraceful. As one of my friends, a military wife, so aptly put it, "These men and women sign over blank checks for their lives." They should be well compensated.

The administration's justification for the small increase in pay is because inflation is under control. The deal is that while "inflation" might be under control, the economy is not. Housing and other basic necessities have become harder and harder to afford, and defending your country doesn't mean you get to pay for life with monopoly money. Housing in areas that are home to military bases is notoriously difficult to find and expensive, making it less and less realistic that military families are able to live on a military salary, especially one with such a small pay raise.

I think it's a terrible shame that America's bravest men and women are being forced to live on base in a bunk with a steel locker as their closet, and that their families are squished into sub-standard, sometimes squalid (wow, there's some alliteration for you) living conditions in order to make ends meet. It doesn't seem fair to me that while Obama decreases the military family housing budget by 1.3 billion between 2009 and 2011 there is a corresponding shrinking of the pay increases expected. It just seems counter-intuitive to me.

How can the people in the military and their families, their support systems, be expected to survive in this perfect storm of a harsh economy and decrease in funding for housing, combined with a smaller pay increase than we've seen in thirty-seven years?

I will say this, though: the 1.4% increase is just Obama's recommendation. Congress still has the ability (and, in my mind, the obligation) to revise this number to an increase more suitable for the current economic climate and the sacrifice a service member and his or her family must make. This is the purpose of my article. Support a higher pay increase for the military. Contact your congressmen, write letters to your representatives. Let them know that the raise these service men and women deserve is far higher than the proposed 1.4%.

This isn't an issue of Republican vs. Democrat, something you can fall into your party lines and feel comfortable about (although I never advocate blindly following political parties, that's a recipe for disaster). This is an issue about respecting and supporting the men and women who give up their comfort, and often their lives, to ensure we retain our "inalienable" rights.

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DISCLAIMER: Well, not so much of a disclaimer as a NOTA BENE: A lot of people have been posting on facebook semi-inflammatory statuses about this pay increase (specifically: "President Obama has proposed a 1.4% pay increase for active duty military in 2011. This is THE LOWEST SINCE 1973! Nice to know that during a time of rampant inflation, while war is fought in 2 theatres, our men and women in uniform get A LOWER PAY INCREASE THAN WELFARE RECIPIENTS. Please repost if you support our troops!"). While I applaud your efforts to get this issue into the spotlight, it's important to mention two things. First, while the economy is terrible, I wouldn't call inflation "rampant." In fact, we actually experienced a slight deflation in 2009 (average was -.34%), as well as a deflation between December 2009 and January 2010, the last month that data was available. Secondly, I'm not quite sure what "welfare recipients" the status references, but Social Security, by far the largest distributor of welfare, isn't receiving any increase in 2010 or 2011. So take that with a grain of salt. It's still an important issue, though.