Our Soldiers Deserve a Raise - Now They'll Get One
Straight Talk with Sam
After hundreds of people were slaughtered in the streets of Paris last December, President Obama sent 50 special operations forces to the Middle East to combat ISIS - those responsible for the brutal attacks.
At around the same time, the United Nations hosted an international Climate Change Conference in France, where a group of bureaucrats from all around the world got together to talk about how to fight global warming.
President Obama sent more Americans there than he did to fight ISIS.
This White House has been comfortable taking a backseat in the war on Islamic extremism. And without real American leadership, ISIS and other terrorist groups have expanded their influence across the world.
That's why House Republicans are once again acting to prioritize national defense and take care of our military men and women. This week we passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2017.
Aside from providing a framework for containing and defeating ISIS, the bill fully funds a 2.1% pay raise for our troops and continues to prohibit Obama from closing Gitmo and moving terrorists to American prisons.
Obama has weakened our military during his presidency. Our bill reverses that, preserving the active-duty Army at 480,000 and adding 3,000 Marines and 4,000 Airmen. For three straight years, he's denied our troops a raise. Our bill changes that, preventing this President from blocking that raise any longer. And under Obama's leadership, we've abandoned the belief that a strong U.S. military makes the rest of the world safer. Our bill ends that, providing $2.5 billion to modernize training for Soldiers and Marines.
A fundamental responsibility of the federal government is to ensure our military remains the strongest on earth. And part of that is doing everything possible to support the men and women who risk their lives to serve our country. I'm proud to say this bill does all of that, and I look forward to seeing it become law in the next few weeks.
Sincerely,
Sam Graves