White House: "No" to $6 for Troops

The Bush White House has declared that the mere $6 a month – six dollars – that Democrats want to add to a pay package for America's troops is "unnecessary" and that the country's service members are already sufficiently compensated.

Democrats are trying to boost the proposed raises for 2008 to 3.5 percent but the administration "strongly opposes" anything over 3 percent, according to media reports. "For President Bush to begrudge our troops a pay raise of (one-half) percentage point is outrageous, appalling, and just unacceptable," said John Bruhns, an Iraq veteran and spokesman for VoteVets.org. At a time when Army deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have been extended from a year to 15 months, he said more compensation is badly needed.

Senator John Kerry has been leading a Senate effort to raise the pay beyond the White House's proposal. In letters to his colleagues and to Bush he chided the administration for lobbying Congress for more tax cuts while claiming the country can't afford even a few extra dollars for service members putting their lives at grave risk every day.