A lawmaker says a trip to Afghanistan to visit U.S. troops has inspired him to continue pushing for an increase in hazardous duty pay, hostile fire pay and family separation allowance.

Rep. Jerry McNerney, D-Calif., has reintroduced what he calls the Combat Act of 2011, which would increase hazardous duty pay and hostile fire pay to $260 a month and family separation allowance to $285 a month. This would result in monthly increases of $35 in hazardous duty pay, $10 in hostile fire pay and $35 in family separation allowance.

McNerney said troops in Afghanistan “talked about the struggles they face providing for their families while they are away from home and in dangerous conditions” and they “asked me to work on increasing pay.”

His bill is HR 1110, and it has the support of the Military Officers Association of America, the National Military Family Association and the Military Order of the Purple Heart.

The Defense Department is almost finished with a year-long study of military pay that will include recommendations for revising combat-related compensation. In a statement for the record submitted March 17 to the House Armed Services Committee, the Pentagon’s top manpower official said the 11th Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation has finished its work and is in the process of briefing senior military leaders about its recommendations. The report will be forwarded to the White House by April 11.

The official, Clifford Stanley, undersecretary of defense for personnel and management, did not provide any details on the recommendations, but said the report will recommend “improvements” that could be made “in how we compensate those sent into combat and how we compensate the Guard and reserve that is more consistent with their current and future use.”

The pay review also was tasked with looking at incentive pays for linguists, special operations forces, remotely piloted vehicle operators and mental health professionals, and at pay for wounded warriors and their caregivers and benefits for survivors.

Washington (CNN) -- More than 100 people were arrested in front of the White House Saturday after gathering for an antiwar protest on the eighth anniversary of the Iraq war.

About 1,000 people from various antiwar groups, including Veterans For Peace, Iraq Veterans Against War and Code Pink, marched around Lafayette Park to make three demands of the Obama administration: stop the war, expose the lies and free Bradley Manning.

Manning is a 23-year-old Army private accused of leaking classified military and State Department documents to the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks. He has been held at Quantico military prison in Virginia for nearly eight months.

Among those calling for Manning's release on Saturday was Daniel Ellsberg, a former Pentagon official whose unprecedented leak of thousands of classified documents -- dubbed the Pentagon Papers -- revealed that top American officials were actively concealing the unwinnable reality of the Vietnam War from the public.
Ellsberg, who went to trial facing 115 years in prison for his leak, was one of the 113 people arrested at Saturday's otherwise peaceful rally on charges of "disobeying an official order."

Police at the protest told CNN the arrests were made after protesters handcuffed themselves to the White House fence. The protesters were transported to a park service facility and served violation notices, the National Park Service said.