Did you know that the average cost of pay and benefits per active-duty service member grew over the period 2001-2012 from $54,000 to $109,000? That’s an increase of 56 percent once inflation is considered.
And that, said respected military analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, doesn’t even include other types of compensation that are outside the regular military budget or in supplemental war funding, such as tax exemptions for service members, extra pay for deployments in Iraq or Afghanistan, or benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
In an Op-Ed in today’s Washington Post, Harrison isn’t suggesting troops are not deserving, or a break in faith with those who serve. But current cost growth, he says, is unsustainable. Harrison argues that with sequestration a reality and future federal budget cuts a certainty, “One of the best ways to honor the sacrifices of our troops is to put military compensation on a sustainable, long-term path — and in a way that considers the preferences of service members.”
That doesn’t mean taking a “lawn-mower approach” to cutting compensation, such as the current budget’s reductions in health care and basic pay, Harrison said.
"The question the Defense Department should be asking is not how to cut costs, but how to get better value for each dollar spent,” Harrison said. “To that end, it should consider which forms of compensation are most important to service members and the trade-offs they make among them/.../"