Jon Ossoff Voted for Military Pay Raises — Then Voted Against Funding Them

I like to remind people as often as I can that Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) is only in the Senate because of the quirky nature of the 2020 election. The overwhelming notion that the 2020 election wasn’t exactly on the up-and-up, combined with Democrats buying billboards discouraging Republicans from voting, led three-quarters of a million GOP voters to stay home from the January 2021 runoff between Ossoff and then-Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

As a result, we’re stuck with Ossoff until the 2026 election. The senator thinks he represents all Georgians, yet his views only align with the residents of the tony, radical neighborhoods around Emory University — in other words, the people he surrounds himself with.

Ossoff even claims that he’s one of the "most bipartisan members of the Senate” and told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December that he was “actively seeking opportunities” to work with President Donald Trump. Yet he has supported less than 5% of the president’s nominees. Georgians can see through this sort of nonsense.

Now Ossoff is trying to claim credit for supporting Georgia’s military personnel without actually supporting them. The truth is that he voted in principle for raises for junior enlisted service members but voted against funding those raises. Ossoff is trying to have it both ways to garner military support without supporting servicemembers himself.

In December, Ossoff voted in favor of the 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which passed 85-14. It was one of the last votes of the 118th Congress, and it included raises for military personnel.

“The bill also includes a number of bipartisan provisions, including a 14.5 percent pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5 percent raise for all other military personnel,” reported Lisbeth Perez at MeriTalk in December.

Fast forward to March, and the time had come to put the raises and other provisions of December’s NDAA into the budget with the continuing resolution (CR). Military.com reported that the CR funded the raises that the NDAA called for; without the CR, the military would have had to take the money from other areas of the budget to cover those raises. Ossoff voted against the CR alongside all his fellow Democrats.

What’s galling is that Ossoff, always in campaign mode because he's ineffective at legislating, is claiming that he kept a promise by voting for military pay raises:

“I made it one of my highest priorities to pass a record pay raise for junior-enlisted personnel in the military, and bringing Republicans and Democrats together, we got it done.” -Sen. Ossoff pic.twitter.com/iVVLAiqufX
— Ossoff's Office (@SenOssoff) April 11, 2025

Yet the truth is that, had the CR failed to pass and the government shut down like Ossoff and his fellow Democrats wanted, the military would be scrambling to move money around to pay these personnel. Somehow, Ossoff is trying to frame this as something he led the way on. We can do so much better here in Georgia, and that starts by voting Ossoff out of office next year.

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