Bush Promises Military Pay Raises

ByABC News
February 12, 2001, 11:23 AM

Feb. 12 -- President Bush is going on tour to reassure the nation's armed forces he will make good on his campaign pledge to boost spending, buck-up morale and strengthen a military he said was in decline.

After signaling a surprise decision to put any major defense budget increases on hold, the new commander in chief today promised his troops a $1.4 billion pay raise.

"While you're serving us well, America is not serving you well enough," Bush told soldiers at Fort Stewart, Ga. the first of three military bases he will visit this week. "America needs a military where our best and brightest are proud to serve, and proud to stay."

Bush announced a total of $5.7 billion in new proposed military spending, including an additional $3.9 billion to improve military health benefits $400 million to improve housing.

Low pay and poor housing, the president said, are "not the way a great nation should reward courage and idealism. It's ungrateful, it's unwise and, it is unacceptable."

"We will do better," he vowed.

Bush Defense Budget Under Fire

But the Bush administration is putting off any major increase in overall defense spending until after the Pentagon completes a wide-sweeeping strategic review. The 2002 budget outline the White House will soon submit to Congress is expected to include only $310 billion in total funding for the military the same amount proposed by former President Clinton.

Bush's budget plan has fallen under fire from defense "hawks" on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill, who warn Bush he is dangerously close to breaking his campaign trail promise to service men and women that "Help is on the way."

Former vice-presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., today urged Bush to trim the 10-year $1.6 trillion federal income tax cut proposal he is now pushing on Capitol Hill in order to allow an immediate increase in defense spending.

"Now that he is in the White House, President Bush seems content to tell our fighting forces, not that help is on the way, but that the check is in the mail," Lieberman, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said at a news conference following Bush's remarks. "I ask the president not just to rethink his freeze on defense spending for next year, but to rethink his tax plan."