The most sacred of political cows in the military budget is soldier pay and benefits. Both the House and Senate want to remove from the proposed 2013 Pentagon budget modest changes to slow the growth in personnel costs.
But soldiers may have a different view of their own welfare than politicians who are so eager to protect them. According to a study released on Thursday, military personnel value their salaries far more than the retirement and health-care benefits provided by the government. These findings suggest a willingness within the services—if not on Capitol Hill—to reassess military pay and benefits.
Drawing on a survey of 2,655 active-duty and retired soldiers, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments found that "more than 90% of service members in all groups" would prefer an increase in basic pay that's less than the savings achieved by raising fees for Tricare, the military health plan, in the 2013 budget. In other words, the soldiers don't treasure that entitlement as much as the Pentagon pays for it. Of all their benefits, soldiers placed "the highest value on being able to choose their duty station and length of tour."
The report comes as the Obama administration tries to win congressional support for its 2013 budget. As part of its cost-cutting efforts, the Pentagon wants to raise Tricare fees for working-age retirees and cap the rise in basic pay at 0.5% starting in 2015. These reforms tinker at the edges and would need to be deeper and more imaginative even to stop the steep rise in costs in recent years. Yet the House, which adopted its version of the military budget in May, permits no changes to retiree health coverage. The full Senate hasn't taken up the measure, but the Armed Services Committee reported out a version without the Tricare fee increase.
Growing faster than the overall budget, ballooning personnel costs crowd out spending on training, weapons and research at the Pentagon—all the more so in tight fiscal times. Since 9/11, the cost per person in the active-duty force has grown 46%. At this rate, health care, pensions and pay will consume the entire defense budget by 2039, according to the CSBA, which calls on the Pentagon to overhaul compensation.