Congress is trying, again, to end hunger in the military
WASHINGTON — In 2016, Erika Tebbens was living outside Seattle, one of the most expensive places in America, trying to feed a family of three on her husband’s enlisted sailor’s salary of less than $25,000 a year.
Tebbens said she did not qualify for Agriculture Department nutrition assistance because of a rule that military personnel include in their income any housing allowance they receive. That same rule was a big reason a Pentagon poverty assistance program that started in 2000 failed to help many service members and was discontinued in 2016.
Tebbens said she managed to afford groceries by putting bills on a credit card, borrowing money from family and requesting grocery gift cards as presents.
Five years later, Congress is trying again to conquer poverty in the ranks. Provisions in both the House and Senate versions of the annual defense policy bill would create a “basic needs allowance” aimed at doing that. But whether it reaches more of those in need than past efforts will depend on how lawmakers decide to treat the housing stipend.
The National Defense Authorization Act passed by the House last week, as well as the version awaiting a Senate vote, would require that one service member per family receive an allowance equal to the difference between the service member’s salary and 130% of the poverty line for that member’s region and family size. It could help people in the position Tebbens found herself in, especially if the housing allowance is excluded from salary. The House version would exclude it.
Depending on where a service member is stationed, the housing allowance can total tens of thousands of dollars. An Army private at the lowest enlisted rank who has dependents and is stationed in Washington, D.C., for example, receives $2,520 a month if he or she isn’t housed on base. For many lower-ranking service members, the housing allowance exceeds salary.
The Senate version is silent on whether to consider the housing stipend.
The House bill would pay an average of $400 a month to 3,000 military families, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which has yet to score the Senate bill.
The annual cost of the House provision would be just over $14 million a year, which some are calling “decimal dust” in an annual defense budget of three-quarters of a trillion dollars.
But the problem of poverty in the military may be much bigger than that. If a 2019 survey of thousands of military personnel by the Military Family Advisory Network is correct, then more than 125,000 active-duty U.S. military personnel, plus their family members, could be suffering from hunger.
If the total is even a fraction of that, it is still unacceptable, several lawmakers told CQ Roll Call in statements.
“It’s our responsibility to ensure that those families, at the least, have access to the support they need to lead healthy, food-secure lives,” said Jimmy Panetta, an Armed Services Committee member who wrote the House provision.
Panetta’s fellow California Democrat Jackie Speier, chair of the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee, said: “None of our brave service members or military families should go hungry or have to resort to food pantries or food stamps.”
Democrat Tammy Duckworth, who is an Armed Services member and an Army combat veteran, offered a similar provision to the Senate bill, but the version the Senate Armed Services Committee approved in July omitted her language to exclude housing payments from income.
Duckworth has said her experience as a child, when her family had to rely on nutrition assistance, has motivated her to combat hunger in the ranks.
Marsha Blackburn, R-tenn., another member of the Senate Armed Services panel who has championed the basic needs allowance, said that worrying that a paycheck might not cover a family’s food bills is “the last thing our servicemen and women should be concerned about.”