Panel OKs stop-loss stipend

Panel OKs stop-loss stipend
By Rick Maze and Michelle Tan - Staff writers
Posted : Sunday Aug 10, 2008 17:10:10 EDT

A $487 billion defense funding bill approved July 31 by a key House subcommittee includes a long-sought reward for more than 160,000 people — more than 120,000 of them soldiers — whose military service was involuntarily extended because of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Along with a 3.9 percent military raise on Jan. 1, a $1.4 million increase to improve barracks and hospitals and a $1 billion boost for training, the House Appropriations defense subcommittee has approved a $500 monthly payment for soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines whose separations or retirements were delayed by stop-loss orders since October 2001.

Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., the subcommittee chairman who has been pushing to reduce the length and frequency of deployments to Iraq, convinced his colleagues to put the stop-loss payment into the bill along with a pay raise that is larger than the 3.5 percent increase requested by the Bush administration.

Murtha said taking care of troops and their families was the top priority in the appropriations bill. “Quality personnel are our military’s backbone,” he said.

If the stop-loss benefit becomes law — and sponsors believe its approval by the panel is a major step in the process — the $500 monthly payments would retroactively cover anyone whose service was extended by as little as one day since the start of the war in Afghanistan in late 2001.


Rest of article at: http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/08/army_stoploss_081008w/