Lawmakers have rejected a White House request to start reducing funding for commissaries, and instead have restored $190 million.
In the budget resolution compromise announced Tuesday, the House and Senate Appropriations committees agreed to that decision, pending the report due to Congress Feb. 1 from the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission.
The bill must be voted on by the full House and Senate.
In their original budget request, Pentagon officials had proposed cutting $200 million from the Defense Commissary Agency budget that funds about 245 stores on military installations around the world, part of a three-year plan that would bring the annual commissary budget down from about $1.3 billion to just $400 million.
Defense officials acknowledged that the plan would shrink the value of the benefit for shoppers; the average savings compared to off-base grocery prices would shrink from its current 30 percent to only 10 percent, with shoppers covering the difference out of pocket.
The budget agreement was announced by Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, and Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky., her House counterpart.
In an April hearing, Mikulski voiced strong opposition to cuts in commissary funding.
"I don't think we ought to cut the commissary budget. ... If we want to look at the stress military families are facing, we need to look at their activities of daily living and look at this holistically," she said. "[The commissary] is one of the most important tools you have for the health and well-being of the military and the garrisons in this country."
The budget resolution bill is expected to be voted on by the House and Senate this week. The defense authorization bill also is expected to be finalized this week. The House approved the authorization bill last week, which included a $100 million reduction in commissary funding.
Senior staff writer Patricia Kime contributed to this report.
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book "A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families." She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
