The Myth of Military Poverty.

• Author: WEBB, ANDREW

Most servicemembers aren't poor. The ones who are need fiscal boot camp.

DURING THE LAST PRESIDENTIAL campaign, George W. Bush raged about the need to improve living conditions for military personnel and their families. After learning that thousands of servicemembers were on food stamps, Bush told the Armed Forces Journal International, "This is not the way that a great nation should reward courage and idealism. It is ungrateful, it is unwise, and it is unacceptable." Accordingly, he promised that one of his first actions if elected would be to spend $1 billion to increase military pay and upgrade substandard military housing. He upped the ante after his inauguration, promising about $6 billion for pay, health benefits, and housing.

But if you drive through any military base and end up at the base exchange--the military department store (complete with home and garden shop and liquor store) --what do you see? In addition to clean-cut men and women walking purposefully past manicured lawns along clean streets, do you notice anything incongruous? Take a good look at the cars. Notice the military stickers on the windshields. If you look closely at the vehicles with blue and red stickers (denoting officers and enlistees), look how new and well-kept they are. Then look at what servicemembers and their families are toting out of the busy complex: TVs, VCRs, stereos, jewelry, clothes ... everything imaginable.

How can this be? We've all heard for years that military personnel are living in poverty, some receiving food stamps. The outrage comes not only from pandering politicians, but also from some military personnel themselves and especially their lobbyists like the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and almost a dozen other groups.

Every year, as Congress debates the military budget, you're likely to hear much wailing and gnashing of teeth among military boosters. Stories about shabby housing and servicemembers living on food stamps are tossed around as if the entire military is living in Dickensian squalor. Members of Congress duly express their support for military pay increases with only the vaguest notion of how the military compensation system is structured and how it compares to that of civilians. A budget is enacted, usually with increases even with, or higher than, the cost of living. And individual servicemembers howl at the injustice of being denied even more.

Complexity = Confusion

The system used to compensate servicemembers is so complex and arcane that neither lawmakers nor most uniformed personnel really know how military compensation compares with civilian pay. The system currently used originated in 1922, when the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard consolidated their systems. The new one was created to compensate--in cash and in kind--a relatively small number of people living in a completely different milieu from today's.

From the system's creation up through most of the Vietnam War, the armed forces operated as the surrogate parent of their personnel--especially enlistees. In return for loyalty, competence, diligence, and in some cases bravery, the military would take care of your every need: housing, food, clothing, medical care, retirement, and pocket money. Even in the early years of the all-volunteer force, most junior enlistees and many (if not most) junior officers were unmarried. They lived and dined on base. If they were stationed aboard ship, they lived and ate meals aboard ship, not ashore. With a few exceptions, the only ones who were married and lived off base were officers and senior enlistees. These people received a cash allowance to compensate for housing and food they would have received if they were single and lived on base.

For most, the cash components of compensation provided for a good time in town and little else. The in kind components, especially extensive recreational facilities, provided free on-base options between pay days. Only senior officers had enough cash income to pay for an upper-middle-class lifestyle.

Today, each service has dozens of occupational specialties, technology touches every aspect of life (both in and out of the military), women serve alongside men virtually everywhere, few military personnel live in military housing, and 60 percent of them are married. Plus, young people are far more independent and individualistic when they enter the service and expect a far greater level of material comfort than their predecessors. Despite these changes, the generals and admirals cling to the antique compensation system their grandfathers knew. Lawrence J. Korb, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower in the Reagan Administration, says the current system "is...