Benefits cuts came up at yet another forum this week — from teens in military families who questioned Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work.
"If benefits are being cut more and more every year, how do you expect to recruit men and women to the armed forces?" asked Ronald Linhardt, 17, a Navy child who is a student at Guam High School.
Linhardt and four other students represented the 67 military and civilian youth who attended the Military Child Education Coalition's annual National Training Seminar. His question drew applause from the crowd of about 700 attendees who are educators, advocates, military school liaison officers and others who work with military students.
Work took the students' questions on topics ranging from the biggest national threats, our nation faces, to how morals affect factor into his judgment, and what the force of the future will look like.
Ronal Linhardt’s question was crafted by students at schools in North Carolina and California where there were large numbers of military students with career military parents, yet the number of their children planning to pursue on pursuing a military career "are marginal."
Benefits and retention
Work said he gets the question about cuts a lot during troop calls with service men and women, and from elsewhere, including veteran and military advocacy groups.
"The No. 1 advantage we have … the secret weapon of the Department of Defense and the U.S. armed forces, are the men and women that serve in uniform. That's our secret weapon, and we want to make sure we have that secret weapon," Work said.
"When you look at the totality ... what we look at is not individual cuts and adds. What we try to do is say we have a benefits package that is truly world class, and we would argue, look at all the different things we have. The enlistment bonuses if we need those. The health care — even though it's getting a little more expensive, it's still far less expensive than any comparable health care plan in our nation. Our retirement … even though we made some adjustments, it was made so that someone who stays for 20 years will actually make more money than in the past, but there's a very strong defined benefit, at 40 percent.
"One of the greatest benefits that this nation has ever bestowed on its veterans is the GI Bill. Depending on the school you go to, that benefit could be worth up to $200,000. And there is no organization in the United States that would transfer that benefit to either the wife or the children ...
"Now these are all very expensive, and we're under a lot of pressure. But we step back, and we work with Congress to say, 'If you take this step, we think it would have a really bad impact on the military.' Other times we say, 'OK, we can live with what you do here as long as you do something over here. And I would still argue when you look at health care, retirement, education benefits in the totality, it's still quite an awesome capability, and I'm just comparing it against what my family had when I grew up."
The benefits today "far surpass" those benefits, he said.
"It's just very difficult. We want to make sure we retain the best and the brightest, and as of right now, the data will tell us that we continue to attract the best and brightest. We don't have a retention problem yet, but we're constantly looking for that….
"This is a tough problem we deal with every day, but I would hope that in totality, we're doing the best we can."
Work was born into a Marine family, and by the sixth grade, his family had moved four times. He went to schools on and off base. In seventh grade, his family was in Rota, Spain. He finished high school in a Defense Department school in Europe.
"I understand what it's like to be in a military family. I understand what it's like to be a military husband. I understand what it's like to be a military father. I understand the stresses of moving and how much pressure is put on military families to do what they do."
Even with that experience as a military child, Work said, he wished someone had told him how stressful it is on the the military family before he made his decision to join the Marine Corps.
Keeping families strong
Nolan Green, 17, an Army child from West Point, N.Y., asked Work what one thing he wished someone had told him in his youth.
Even with that experience as a military child, Work said, he wished someone had told him how stressful it is on the the military family before he made his decision to join the Marine Corps.
"I wish my mom or dad had told me how difficult it is on military families, how stressful it is on military families, when the family commits to the service of the nation."
It's not just the spouse — or both the mom and dad if dual military, he said. "It's the entire family. Even though I grew up in a military family, I just wish my mom and dad would have said, 'Look, if you're going to embark on this course, you really have to think about how you're going to go about being a good father and a good husband, and keep the family in the center of everything you're going to do."
Work said he and Secretary of Defense Ash Carter "have the greatest respect for military families and what you do for the whole joint team. … We consider families as part of the joint force. The decisions made by service members increasingly affect families, and if we don't take care of families, we're going to have a retention problem."
He acknowledged the pressure of constant moving, of one or both spouses often being away from home, and said "families are absolutely key to the strength of the joint force. Whether you know it or not, you volunteered to serve your nation also.
"And you're doing it fantastically."
Karen Jowers covers military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times. She can be reached at kjowers@militarytimes.com.
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.
