The Navy and Marine Corps are each asking Congress for greater than $250 million to deal with the declining state of their barracks buildings — one thing that has been highlighted each in media and authorities watchdog experiences — amid a push to prioritize spending on sailors.
The Navy desires to speculate $204 million within the restoration of unaccompanied housing — a 24% improve from final yr’s request — and the Marine Corps mentioned it is asking for $65 million, in line with supplies offered by the Division of the Navy on Friday.
The transfer comes as navy leaders battle to fund all their priorities after final yr’s transfer by Congress to cap the protection finances as a part of a bipartisan settlement. The Navy’s finances director, Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, confused that the constraints pressured them to “make onerous decisions.”
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“In these onerous decisions, we prioritize readiness to deploy and function our fleet [and] we prioritize our individuals,” Reynolds mentioned in a briefing to reporters Friday.
The Navy and Marine Corps finances request will now go to Congress, which is able to take the proposals and craft its personal model of the navy’s finances this yr.
Reynolds mentioned the service made a deliberate option to spend cash on “restoration [and] modernization first to get it to a spot the place we would like our younger sailors to reside” earlier than shifting to constructing extra new barracks.
The finances paperwork offered to reporters Friday mentioned that the Navy additionally desires to spend $1 billion over the subsequent 5 years for housing building and renovations.
The Navy, like all the opposite providers, was hammered in a authorities watchdog report launched final yr that discovered deplorable situations, equivalent to bedbug and cockroach infestations, defective heating and air con, and safety points, equivalent to doorways that could not lock and squatters.
In the meantime, the Marine Corps ordered a forcewide, wall-to-wall inspection of each Marine barracks all over the world after a slew of experiences and photographs that confirmed soiled and unlivable situations at a number of Marine bases throughout the nation.
Reynolds additionally famous that barracks modernization is only one facet of the Navy’s budgetary push to take higher care of sailors.
The Navy’s finances chief mentioned that the service can also be asking to totally fund the sustainment of its gyms in addition to barracks buildings.
Reynolds mentioned the Navy desires to pour “more cash into our youngster growth facilities for our households [and] more cash into our well-being and psychological well being areas.”
In line with finances paperwork, the service additionally goals to spend $25 million increasing the Naval Neighborhood Faculty, totally fund its tuition help program and improve funding for psychological well being and suicide prevention providers by $52 million.
Sailors and Marines, in addition to troops within the different providers, are set for a 4.5% pay hike — a rise that complies with a regulation that claims troops are entitled to an annual increase based mostly on the Employment Value Index.
The Navy’s No. 2 civilian chief, Beneath Secretary of the Navy Erik Raven, instructed reporters that the service desires to do extra for sailors, however it’s being held again by Congress, which nonetheless hasn’t handed this yr’s finances regardless of the brand new fiscal yr beginning final October.
“Now we have initiatives which can be nonetheless pending in [last year’s budget], that we’re prevented from getting at,” Raven instructed reporters Friday.
“However the first order of enterprise is to make it possible for we’re not transferring backwards within the meantime,” he mentioned.
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