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Pay comparisons miss the point: We have no counterparts

The Congressional Budget Office has commented over and over again that military pay is good enough [“A fresh look at pay,” July 16]. Give me a break. I get really tired of hearing that we are just fine compared with our civilian counterparts.

We have no civilian counterpart.

In my 20 years of active duty, I have seen the civilian-military salary comparison many times. Every time someone says we get paid enough, we get paid the same, we don’t need higher raises because of the Employment Cost Index, he’s missing the real story — that pay and compensation should reflect the military’s countless sacrifices.

Think about the men and women who are dying for their country and the freedom of everyday Americans. Take into account war. Take into account the overtime, the weekends, the deployments, the temporary duty assignments, doing more with less, the training, missed childbirths, missed holidays, missed graduations, missed deaths. The list goes on.

This is not a knock on the civilians who work alongside us, nor those who are not serving. I am not saying we are better than anyone else. And yes, we could just get out of the service and pursue a career that would pay us more. But some of us love what we do. And we have the right to feel that we should get paid better. But we have no civilian counterpart.

I have my complaints about pay just like the next person, but this is what I do and love. It would be nice to see someone in Congress step out and say our military members should get paid more just for what they do and sacrifice, not because the Employment Cost Index says so or because the pay gap is such a percentage.

We hear we should not get paid more because we are not as educated as civilians working in the private sector; because we didn’t go to college before joining the military; because the recruitment numbers are where they need to be; because the cook at the restaurant in town gets paid the same as the cook in the chow hall. Stop telling me I am the same as the guy down the street and that I get paid what he does because we do the same thing. We don’t even come close.

The writer, an active-duty master sergeant, is the fabrication flight chief at Osan Air Base, South Korea.