The Pentagon's annual budget request unveiled Monday pencils in a 1.3 percent pay raise for service members next year, a nominal uptick that would fail to keep pace with the projected growth in civilian-sector wages.

The 1.3 percent raise, which must be approved by Congress, is technically higher than the raises approved for this year and last — both 1 percent, the smallest annual increases in the 42-year all-volunteer era.

Nevertheless, a 1.3 percent hike would cut into the real spending power for military families because it will fall well below the estimated 2.3 percent rise in annual private-sector wages, according to budget documents released Monday.

The massive $585 billion Pentagon budget request for fiscal 2016 that went to Capitol Hill shows the military personnel budget staying relatively flat and includes many of the same proposed cuts to troops' pay and benefits that were floated last year but ultimately rejected by lawmakers.

The political battles gearing up over the 2016 budget are likely to be even more intense than in recent years because a two-year compromise between Republicans and Democrats that eased the impact of the spending caps known as sequestration will expire before the start of the fiscal year, in October.

The Defense Department's overall base budget request of $534.3 billion is far beyond the sequestration-level funding cap of $499 billion, which is federal law until Congress acts to change it. If that doesn't happen, the law would impose across-the-board spending cuts similar to those in 2013 that resulted in furloughs for DoD civilian employees and training cutbacks across the force.

The military personnel budget request is up slightly to $136.7 billion in 2016, from $135.2 billion requested last year.

But spending on military pay and benefits is shrinking as a percentage of the DoD base budget. Pay and benefits, which includes health care, make up about 33.5 percent of this year's budget, down from 36.1 percent in 2014, budget documents show.

No big new compensation initiatives have been added since last year, when the Pentagon unveiled an unusually aggressive push to scale back the military pay-and-benefits package. Although Congress so far has rejected many of those proposals, defense officials seem intent on trying again.

They include:

*Scale back the Basic Allowance for Housing so that troops living off base would cover 5 percent of their housing costs out of pocket. For more than a decade, BAH has covered 100 percent of housing costs; last year, Congress trimmed that to 99 percent for this year. Today's benefit remains far higher than in the 1990s, when it covered only about 80 percent of housing costs.

*Chop the commissary subsidy by about two-thirds, which would drive up customer prices at many on-base facilities, likely force cutbacks in store operating hours and days, and devalue the benefit to military families.

*Overhaul the way Tricare provides health benefits, which includes higher deductibles and co-pays for military families. The budget proposal also renews a proposal to make military retirees pay more for their health care.

A minor change in the proposals includes the addition of a "no-cost" option for active-duty families who are seeking health care but may not have access to a military treatment facility.

That change stems from last year's proposal for new Tricare fees designed to give military families an incentive to seek health care at on-base military facilities, which is cheaper to provide compared to off-post, civilian-run facilities. That proposal was criticized for unnecessarily penalizing families who do not live near a military treatment facility.

The budget request for overseas contingency operations, which includes Iraq and Afghanistan, is down to $50.9 billion, less than half its size in 2012.

For the mission to fight Islamic militants in Iraq, the Pentagon's budget pencils in a steady state of operations in 2016, projecting the total number of troops deployed in support of Operation Inherent Resolve would remain the same next year.

The budget documents suggest that total average troop levels in Afghanistan would fall from more than 11,000 this year to fewer than 6,000 next year.

The budget proposal was finalized long before the Jan. 29 arrival of the final report from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission, which recommended shrinking military retirement payments and creating a new 401(k)-style benefit for troops who serve less than 20 years.

The budget request sidesteps the commission's controversial proposals, saying only that the Pentagon and the White House will be reviewing those controversial proposals later this year.

About Andrew Tilghman

Andrew Tilghman is the executive editor for Military Times. He is a former Military Times Pentagon reporter and served as a Middle East correspondent for the Stars and Stripes. Before covering the military, he worked as a reporter for the Houston Chronicle in Texas, the Albany Times Union in New York and The Associated Press in Milwaukee.

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