By any standard, the money the United States government pours into its military is simply overwhelming. Take the $858 billion defense spending authorization that President Biden signed into law last month. Not only did that bill pass in an otherwise riven Senate by a bipartisan majority of 83-11, but this year's budget increase of 4.3% is the second highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. Indeed, the Pentagon has been granted more money than the next 10 largest Cabinet agencies combined. And that doesn't even take into account funding for homeland security or the growing costs of caring for the veterans of this country's post-9/11 wars. That legislation also includes the largest pay raise in 20 years for active-duty and reserve forces and an expansion of a supplemental "basic needs allowance" to support military families with incomes near the poverty line.
And yet, despite those changes and a Pentagon budget that's gone through the roof, many U.S. troops and military families will continue to struggle to make ends meet. Take one basic indicator of welfare: whether or not you have enough to eat. Tens of thousands of service members remain "food insecure" or hungry. Put another way, during the past year, members of those families either worried that their food would run out or actually did run out of food.
