GI's and Food Stamps

LOL! ROFLOL! Telling a man who served in the military for well over 20 years that he "never tried to live off military pay."

Now that's funny. I don't care who you are. That's funny!

You may want to check out this thread:
My military service

 

Tom, I believe she meant for junior (E-4 and below) enlisted with families. That gets tough. It also depends on the location, the availability of on-base housing, and the sufficiency (for the local housing market) of the BAQ.

 

An E-1 with more than four months service (in this locality) receives $1,600 a month in pay and just about $400 a month in Basic Allowance for Subsistence. If he or she lives off post, there's another $1,000 or so for Basic Allowance for Housing. (The service member who lives in privatized base housing also receives BAH, but it all goes to the contractor.)

All are counted as income for food stamp purposes.

Because food stamp eligibility is determined by state data, eligibility varies widely.

The military for a time had a program that provided supplemental allowances for food, but it was hardly ever used and it was discontinued last year in favor of using the food stamp program.

The number of service members who receive food stamps is much lower than in the general population (although no one knows what the real number is) and is largely confined to very new soldiers and those with large families.

I am unclear whether the administration is proposing a ban on food stamps for military personnel or a restructuring of the program in which, because of their pay, they would no longer be eligible. I suspect it is the latter.

 

Think of the difference in the local markets between high priced assignments like Joint Base Lewis-McChord (Tacoma, WA) or any of the San Diego facilities and assignments to some of the lower priced locales.

 

That's (supposedly) taken care of through variable Basic Allowance for Housing. Except for a few locations, food prices are not nearly as variable as housing prices.

 

More like 15 percent after the standard deduction and personal exemptions.

 

And I'm thinking in terms of an E-4 (or below) under six. I can remember in the early days of the all-volunteer force the problem was the pay\BAQ charts assumed E-4s and below were single and had no dependents. They were accounting for E-2 Snuffy joining up and marrying his/her high school sweetheart once Snuffy got out of basic. Or Snuffy joins up to provide for his\her offspring.

 

Commissaries have been required to carry only brand-name products at cost. That skews the prices because more and more Americans have turned to cheaper store-brand products. The commissary system is now preparing to introduce store brands, but it's not clear that commissaries can continue to exist because they require a large subsidy ($1.4 billion a year) that the Pentagon would like to use for other purposes, especially given, as you said, that off-post retailers are competitive (and don't forget the commissary surcharge of 5 percent, which offsets the tax exemption).

Exchanges are a whole different animal. They are profit centers whose business model is to make money to support family and morale, welfare and recreation activities that don't break even. Their big advantage is the sales tax exemption, but often that doesn't make them competitive with online retailers or even off-post retailers.

Maybe. Military pay has improved markedly over the past several years. The fact that a small percentage of military personnel (brand-new soldiers and those with exceptionally large families) qualify for food stamps is more a reflection of the expansion of food stamp eligibility in the wake of the Great Recession than of parsimonious military pay.