WASHINGTON — A recently enacted income supplement for low-ranking U.S. troops, put in place primarily to alleviate food insecurity in the ranks, will help fewer than 1% of the estimated scores of thousands of hungry U.S. military families, according to Pentagon figures.
That statistic, which has not been previously reported, suggests Congress has a lot more work to do to ensure service members who put their lives on the line for their country don’t also have to sacrifice food for themselves and their families, experts and some lawmakers said.
U.S. Army troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border eat a Thanksgiving meal in 2018 at a base near the Donna-Rio Bravo International Bridge in Donna, Texas.
Fully 24% of active-duty service members recently experienced “low food security,” meaning they sometimes lacked quality meals, according to the latest Pentagon survey of troops in late 2020 and early 2021 — before the recent inflation surge. Of those, 10% periodically experienced “very low food security,” meaning they sometimes ate less at mealtime, missed meals entirely or lost weight due to inadequate food intake in the previous year.
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Those percentages suggest that 286,800 active-duty service members have had some level of food insecurity of late, and nearly 120,000 have sometimes gone hungry recently due to a lack of food, according to senators on the Armed Services Committee. The figures do not count family members of those active-duty personnel, nor are reservists and their family members included in the tally.
To address this problem, Congress established a “basic needs allowance” in the fiscal 2022 National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, for lower-income service members. Starting this month, the provision would boost their pay to ensure it is at least 130% of the poverty line for their area.
The fiscal 2023 NDAA, enacted late last month, will increase the percentage to 150%, and the law gives Defense Department leaders discretion to pay up to 200% in limited circumstances.
However, only about 2,400 service members will be helped by the basic needs allowance that just went into effect, a Defense Department spokesman told CQ Roll Call.
That figure represents 0.8% of the estimated 286,800 active-duty service members who reported low or very low food security. Moreover, even if only the nearly 120,000 troops with very low food security are considered, 2,400 troops is still only 2% of that total. And even if the Pentagon’s survey results overstate the number of service members with low or very low food security by a factor of 10, the basic needs allowance still would help only about 8% of them.
The reason so few troops will be helped has to do with the narrow way the law and the implementing regulation were written, according to military family advocates and some lawmakers.
The basic needs allowance will cost $12 million in fiscal 2023, according to the defense spending law enacted last month. That amount is 0.001% of the $858 billion national defense budget.
Experts and lawmakers say more should be done to help those in need.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, is one of a bloc of lawmakers looking to ensure the basic needs allowance and other forms of support reach more military families who need it.
“This crisis isn’t only a stain on our country’s conscience, but also harms our military readiness, recruitment, and morale,” Jacobs said.
Experts say the biggest problem with the allowance pertains to how a service member’s income is calculated — specifically, the fact that their “basic allowance for housing” is by default included in the income tally for purposes of determining eligibility for the basic needs allowance.
Troops who live off base get these housing payments, typically totaling thousands of dollars annually, to cover most of the cost of their residences. Those who live on base do not get the payments.
Critics argue that the housing allowance should be left out of the income count under the basic needs allowance program as well as for the Agriculture Department’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, because including housing payments inflates the income totals of potential uniformed beneficiaries so much that most do not qualify for aid.
The fiscal 2022 NDAA gives service secretaries latitude to leave the housing payments out of the income count in areas where costs of living are especially high. But advocates with military family groups say the Pentagon has narrowly applied the law so that these waivers will rarely happen.
The program’s limitations “will significantly reduce” its impact, Jennifer Goodale, director of military family and survivor policy at the Military Officers Association of America, said in an email.
A study for Congress released this month by the Rand Corp. found that 21 times as many people would benefit from the basic needs allowance if service members’ housing payments were omitted from the income calculations.
That would mean that 50,400 troops, instead of 2,400, would benefit — a big difference, but still only a fraction of those who experience low or very low food insecurity.
Expanding the number of those who can get the allowance and upping the amount they receive may be necessary, but some say it remains unclear if that alone will solve the problem.
