Arguably most politically difficult on the think tanks' list of cost cutting priorities is military compensation, including health care and retirement costs, a system that dates to the 1970s and has remained virtually unchanged except for acts of Congress to add further benefits/.../
Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said there's a way for DoD to diffuse the politics behind military pay and benefits. He said the department should gather data from actual military members to determine which benefits they value versus how much they cost to provide.
He estimated overall military compensation costs have grown by 56 percent over the past decade, and in the case of health care spending, an increase of 110 percent. But he said simply slicing back existing programs is the wrong approach.
"Compensation is the primary tool by which we can induce people to volunteer for the military. You don't want to use a lawn mower approach that just whacks off whatever sticks out and grows the fastest," he said. "We've got to ask a different question. It's not about how to cut costs, it's about how to get better value for each dollar we spend, and for some of them, servicemembers don't value them commensurate with what they cost to provide. We need to have these reforms so that we can actually get to the real debate, which is the strategic discussion about what kind of military capabilities we should have, what kind of force structure we should have and what the proper level of defense spending is. But until we get to these reforms, none of those things really matter."