Public Interest

Armed Forces Members And Their Families Are Starving Because Of A Disastrous Legislative Mistake

This is important. Make sure your representatives know about this.

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military baby babies soldier infant childImportant bi-partisan proposals to lift the lives of low-income Americans recently have been suggested in this space, specifically a diverse gathering of experts for a Presidential Poverty Summit and the continuation of the Legal Aid Inter-agency Roundtable. Flying low, where few notice, is another opportunity to build bridges and find consensus. It will ensure that our military families are cared for with the respect they deserve.

The Military Hunger Prevention Act, introduced into Congress by a bi-partisan group of members of the House of Representatives, would correct what we can only hope is an error in drafting rather than an error in judgment. The legislation would make available to a surprising group of needy Americans the food support they need to ensure relief from the hunger that poverty can bring. Those needy Americans are currently-serving members of the United States military.

As hard as it may be to believe, there are tens of thousands of armed forces members who need help accessing nutritious food for themselves and their families. Among those many thousands are an untold number who cannot qualify for the very effective Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, commonly known as SNAP, more commonly referred to as food stamps. The short-term impacts of going hungry are obvious, a physical and emotional pain for which there is no relief other than a complete remedy for the problem, that being access to healthy food. The long-term impacts are even more devastating, especially for children in food-deprived homes. Their intellectual development is impeded, their health is affected, their learning suffers, the arc of their lives is forever changed. And creating hungry, worried military service members is an impact that none of us can afford.

Putting aside for the moment why any family in the United States should have inadequate access to food, it takes a complete suspension of disbelief to even accept the possibility that in the 21st Century there are American military families in danger of going hungry. But it is more than a possibility, it is a reality, a national shame if ever there was one. And yet a quirk in the law prevents many of our active duty military from receiving SNAP benefits, even though they most decidedly should be eligible. The Military Hunger Prevention Act seeks to reverse that quirk.

The Act would exclude the value of a military housing allowance from any income or other assets used in assessing eligibility for SNAP. Not only is this simple and sensible but it comports with other aspects of U.S. law. For instance, this basic housing allowance (BAH) is exempt from taxation by the Internal Revenue Service. Neither is it considered when calculating eligibility for the earned income tax credit, the Head Start program, and other similar benefits. By not similarly excluding the BAH from consideration for SNAP eligibility, the law is both blind to a very real problem and is unfathomably inconsistent with other, thoroughly reasoned and reasonable, statutory provisions. It places an inexplicable barrier which military families must try to, but often cannot, overcome to find much needed, and much deserved, food security.

SNAP specifically is intended to reduce the food insecurity that causes households to cut their food intake, disrupt their eating habits, resort to dangerously unhealthy eating, and to go hungry because of a lack of income or other assets . . .  in other words because of poverty. SNAP truly is the crux of the country’s food safety net. The program lifts more than 2 million children out of severe poverty every year and helps tens of millions more avoid hunger. But military families receiving BAH often are shut out.

Hunger robs from us all. While SNAP reduces the number of sick days the working poor must use, imagine what it does to members of the military on whose capabilities we all rely. A fighting force with not enough to eat, worrying about their families’ health and well-being, is undermining the building of a strong military to protect our national security. It seems safe to assume that military women and men will limit their own nutritional needs to ensure their children have enough to eat. The effects of hunger and malnutrition on the brains of children can result in irreversible damage. Susan Davis, a member of Congress from San Diego, and one of the original sponsors of the Act, has said succinctly, “Those who make great personal sacrifices in service to our country should not have to struggle to provide regular, nutritious meals to their families.” She added that this “unintended” barrier “prevents military families struggling with food insecurity from getting help from available federal nutrition assistance programs.”

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Abby J. Leibman, president and CEO of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, one of the leading anti-hunger organizations in the United States, has been working closely with Rep. Davis, campaigning actively and effectively for passage of the Act. She cites the alarming rate at which military families “struggling to put nutritious food on the table [are] turning for emergency assistance to food pantries on or near the military base.” MAZON learned that, for instance, at Camp Pendleton in California there are four food pantries operating on the base. In support of the legislation, MAZON has taken the position that the “SNAP program is an incredibly effective response to food insecurity, and by removing a barrier to SNAP for military families, the legislation makes good on our national commitment to take care of those who proudly serve in our armed forces.” A Government Accountability Office report concluded there are military bases across the country on which food pantries are trying to provide some additional support to families, but it is simply not enough.

Davis and Leibman have determined that the SNAP program provides vital support to struggling families and that the Military Hunger Prevention Act would justifiably offer hope to many by excluding from eligibility determination any and all BAH funds received by families in military service. It is a step that will honor our nation’s historic dedication to caring for those who proudly serve us all. This technical drafting error is unfairly leaving those families to the ravages of poverty and hunger at a time, at any time, when that type of treatment simply is intolerable.

A bi-partisan recognition of this unfortunate situation can turn around the lives of those to whom we have made a promise of support and to whom we owe so much.

David LashDavid A. Lash serves as Managing Counsel for Pro Bono and Public Interest Services at O’Melveny & Myers LLP. He can be reached at dlash@omm.com. The opinions expressed are his alone.

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