Mike Gallagher: “I am proud to join my colleagues in strong support of this bipartisan defense bill that we successfully voted out of the…”

“I am proud to join my colleagues in strong support of this bipartisan defense bill that we successfully voted out of the committee just 3 weeks ago. The chairman and the ranking member mentioned some of the most important provisions in the bill, not only the overall top-line number, which represents a $37 billion increase over President Biden's request, but also a 4.6 percent pay raise, a 2.4 percent pay bonus for enlisted personnel to counteract the effects of inflation on low-income military families, the $500 million additional housing allowance to counteract the skyrocketing cost of rent on military families, as well as an additional $750 million to reduce the cost of food and other necessities for our servicemembers. I think it is worth understanding why this is important, not only just in light of our overall duty to take care of our men and women in uniform at a critical time, but we also have a looming recruiting crisis on our hands. I am very concerned about the inability of any of the services to meet their recruiting goals, and we are going to have to spend a lot of time thinking about that problem and how we fix it before we proactively lower standards because, at the end of the day, notwithstanding any advance in technology, it all comes down to the men and women who volunteer and risk their lives to defend this country. It is about the warfighter. That is where we need to stay focused.…”