Lawmakers writing this year’s defense authorization bill will soon decide once again how best to help military families plagued by food insecurity, as legislative efforts to date have failed to help more than 99 percent of those in need, official figures show.
Nearly 1 in 4 active-duty servicemembers — or about 286,800 people, not counting their family members — suffer food insecurity, according to the most recent Pentagon survey of the force. Of those, about 120,000 deal with “extreme food insecurity,” the department found.
But Congress’ purported solution to the problem, a so-called basic needs allowance, or BNA, is helping only about 2,400 troops — or just 0.8 percent of the 286,800 reportedly in need, CQ Roll Call disclosed in January, citing figures provided by the Defense Department.
