50% BAH cuts for dual military, 25% to military roommates

[Jcleppe]

Maybe just me, but if 2 married Harvard professors (same level) were told that one would be paid less because they were married, and assumed part of their pay goes to housing, I would expect a huge lawsuit against Harvard for discrimination. Wouldn't you?

I guess you could look at this another way.

Why should a Harvard Professor that's married to another Harvard professor get paid more then a Harvard professor that's married to someone that is not a Harvard professor, assuming that part of their pay goes to housing. I would think that would cause a much larger lawsuit.

 

[hornetguy]

Maybe just me, but if 2 married Harvard professors (same level) were told that one would be paid less because they were married, and assumed part of their pay goes to housing, I would expect a huge lawsuit against Harvard for discrimination. Wouldn't you?

I guess you could look at this another way.

Why should a Harvard Professor that's married to another Harvard professor get paid more then a Harvard professor that's married to someone that is not a Harvard professor, assuming that part of their pay goes to housing. I would think that would cause a much larger lawsuit.

False comparison. Two single professors get married. Their salary is combined. No advantage given. Even if given a housing allotment. Part of a total pay package.

Two military members get married. Their income is combined. No extra advantage is given because they are married. Still a silly argument that they are getting favored treatment. They combined their income like any other couple that gets married. Somebody just thought it would be a great idea to lower their income because "save some money!"

If we seriously think housing can only be used for housing, why don't we have members get their housing contract, bring it to finance, and pay them only up to the allotment for their station. Therefore they pay out of pocket for anything above BAH and they aren't allowed to pocket any difference between their contract and BAH. Clearly the military is saying: here's a housing stipend for you individually - you may spend it how you see fit. That's part of a pay package. This argument is so freaking absurd.

 

[Jcleppe]

If we seriously think housing can only be used for housing, why don't we have members get their housing contract, bring it to finance, and pay them only up to the allotment for their station. Therefore they pay out of pocket for anything above BAH and they aren't allowed to pocket any difference between their contract and BAH. Clearly the military is saying: here's a housing stipend for you individually - you may spend it how you see fit. That's part of a pay package. This argument is so freaking absurd.

Be careful what you ask for, Congress has done stranger things.

While the argument may seem absurd to some in the military, those outside the military will look at it the same as Congress and there surely won't be any push back from any civilians to keep the system as it is. These new provisions were added by Congress, not the Administration, which has proposed only to reduce the BAH to 95% of the average local housing cost, a big enough hit in itself.

At this rate it won't be long before they decide it's a good idea to tax BAH and BAS. The recruiters job is sure not getting any easier.

 

[raimius]

Why should a Harvard Professor that's married to another Harvard professor get paid more then a Harvard professor that's married to someone that is not a Harvard professor, assuming that part of their pay goes to housing. I would think that would cause a much larger lawsuit.

How does a mil to mill couple get paid more than two single mil members?

 

[Jcleppe]

How does a mil to mill couple get paid more than two single mil members?

I agree, they don't.

My point was that a Mil-Mil married couple receives nearly twice the Housing allowance that a Mil-Civilian married couple receives due to the simple fact they are both in the military.

Two couples live next door to each other, the rent is the same for both couples. One couple (A) includes a military member and a civilian spouse, the other (B) includes a military member and a military spouse. Couple B receives nearly twice the housing allowance then couple B.

While this may be considered part of the members pay is understandable from a military member's point of view, the issue is going to be that there will be very little support from the civilian population and Congress when they are looking at ways to cut the budget. Right now it seems like an easy target.

 

[Rocko]

If you think the "Ghost marriage" is a problem, wait for all the Ghost mailing addresses if this one passes.

I'm on board with the retirement overhaul but this one is ludicrous. They are going to end up with a lot of service members who have kids but don't marry. But what the heck I see that everyday where I live. Mom and Dad don't marry but live together so Mom can collect money, food stamps and free health insurance from the Government as a single mom with no income.

But hey, perhaps that's the master plan.....

 

[Rocko]

What about a military member who is married to a civilian working for the government? Should we reduce the civilians pay because we are already paying for their housing through their spouse? Does this rule also apply to other Government employees, such as politicians? Part of everyone's pay is for housing and food as everyone needs this.

 

[NavyHoops]

BAH should be the same rate regardless of dependents or not. They need to get rid of family seps pay also or give it to everyone. Call it what you want or make it a part of the base pay and then give COLA dependent on location it is treated as pay by military members. Same pay, for the same rank, for the same years of service. The military has specialty pay such as flight pay, nuke pay, doctor pay (which can vary greatly on specialty), bonuses (dept head, nuke, etc). None of these are mysteries and can total a pretty good chunk of change in many cases.

BAH is alot better than it used to be. I never had Marines living in poverty. BAH at all my duty stations was plenty to let them live reasonably. More than anything most my Marines who couldn't find affordable housing, had unreal expectations for their rank or couldn't balance a check book. I have seen ghost marriages. More than ghost marriages, I saw Marines separate from their spouses and never get divorced for 2,5,10 years later because it just was easier and they got more money. More pay for the service member and Tri Care for the spouse. The most popular of them all is young first term Marines getting married way too young to a stranger just to "get off base." I almost couldn't blame them because of the extra crap they make the single Marines do. 4-6 hour field days, extra watch, Gunny or 1stSgt in their stuff, limit to a 6 pack of beer, going home on deployment first. I always felt bad for the single Marines and as one of the very few single officers I always tried to advocate for fairness of my single Marines. But that is another debate for another day.

 

[usna1985]

Not to hijack the thread but agree with Hoops. I remember being assigned watch every single holiday during an entire year because I was single and others in the unit had spouses/kids. It wasn't a coincidence as the XO stated this was exactly what he was doing so they could spend the holidays with "their families." As if single people don't have families or friends.

As for the topic at hand, I'm not sure how I feel about military couples getting the extra money. I suppose it comes back to the "purpose" of BAH. If it is part of your compensation, then it's something you earn as part of your salary and benefits and shouldn't change regardless of whom you live with. If it's meant to cover housing costs, then as someone noted above, they should treat roommates the same regardless of whether that person is a spouse, a civilian, or military.

In the end, I really wonder how much this will save and I strongly suspect that enterprising soldiers and sailors (including officers) will figure out ways to beat the system -- some of them, as Hoops notes, are probably not actions we as a society want to promote.

 

[hornetguy]

As for the topic at hand, I'm not sure how I feel about military couples getting the extra money. I suppose it comes back to the "purpose" of BAH. If it is part of your compensation, then it's something you earn as part of your salary and benefits and shouldn't change regardless of whom you live with. If it's meant to cover housing costs, then as someone noted above, they should treat roommates the same regardless of whether that person is a spouse, a civilian, or military.

Too many folks have the warped notion that its "extra" money. No, it's the money earned by each member. The debate is whether we should take some of the pay of a member because they moved in with another member. The longer other members of the military say, "ya, they shouldn't be allowed to get that, its sooooo unfair!" instead of being supportive and defending that income, the quicker they will discover Congress will then move on to find other programs with income pieces to take from them. And those mil to mil couples or room mates won't have a lick of sympathy or be an ally in the next income fight. Add this stuff to the "I'm glad I got out" pile.

 

[NavyHoops]

Agree Hornetguy. Can you imagine the amount of extra staff required to handle all this paperwork (if we went the route of pay what it costs someone route), how much would we really save to process housing contracts,leases, etc? Not to mention we would probably see military folks waiting months to have that paperwork processed and actually get BAH. Not to mention it is no one's business who anyone lives with off base! I was a legal officer for both my units, the amount of cases we had sucked, add this to the mix of Marines trying to skirt the system, I wouldn't want to even fathom what that looks like. I have tons and tons of friends who are in mil-mil marriages. Facebook has been on fire the last few days!

 

[hornetguy]

Forgive all my spelling errors last post, yikes!

My Facebook has been on fire too. Scary how many people I know are ok with this. Makes my mouth drop. As military demographics have changed and we are more diverse, the pay system hasn't caught up to the greater diversity of living arrangements today. If we just had base pay + COLA, this wouldn't have even been a possibility or debate. You're spot on. They have no business monitoring and policing living arrangements that are legal and conducive to good order and discipline (aka an E-2 not rooming with an O-4). On top of that, the admin required to monitor will probably cost more than the 'savings' in pay!

 

[osdad]

I disagree with hornet to the extent that BAH should not be based on rank. An apartment costs the same for a E5 as it does an O6. Making it base pay + COLA doesn't take this into account unless they make a sliding COLA scale (assume that apt costs $1000/mo = => E5 x 40% is the same as O6 x 10% ) That would still be better than what they do now.

 

[hornetguy]

Again, archaic pay system confounds the whole way we look at military pay.

Is it reasonable that an O1 makes ~$50K, that an O5 makes ~$117K etc. I think so based on the civilian equivalents. Sure, an equivalent apartment for the E-5 is the same for an O-5.....but for the same job, education, requirements, do we expect them to live in equivalent housing? Not really. Rolling all this up into base pay makes the scales look the same as today and families can spend however much they want on housing (there are plenty of reasonable recommendations on % of income that should go to housing out there).

I would use base pay as the salary at the lowest CONUS cost of living location (look up the lowest BAH) and add COLA units to adjust to the station they are at. I'm sure the civilian multinationals have their own systems that do this in their own way. Unfortunately, without a rank adjustment to COLA, the system would penalize higher earners since the proportional increase in COL is more the higher the earnings. (For example, the difference in a cost of 3K sq ft home that a person earning $120K between CA and OK is a much larger spread than a 1.8K sq ft home for someone making $70K a year).

Under the current system, the income and adjustments that come from base + BAH + BAS + COLA make members at all ranks and time in grade roughly equivalent to their civilian counterparts if not better (at least at lower ranks). Minus the non-dep vs. dep BAH argument, the current pay system makes sense to me viewed as a total pay package for each member. Delving into who should be allowed to live with whom and get paid for what living situation is just ridiculously intrusive to me and serves no better than to let people whine about how unfair everyone else has it because they got married, or have room mates, or whatever. I chose to live alone in Los Angeles at my BAH rate while many of my colleagues had a room mate. They pocketed nearly half of their BAH (usually around $800 of our $1800 in BAH). Did I complain? No way! I valued having my own place and they valued using that towards travel, eating out, whatever. Every person has their own priorities and choices - penalizing their income on how they choose housing is petty to the extreme.

 

[Jcleppe]

There seems to be a lot of back and forth about whether BAH is part of a service members total pay compensation, it seems pretty clear from just it's name, "Basic Allowance for Housing", what it's intended for.

Some seem surprised that there is not universal condemnation in the military over this proposal, is that really a surprise. There will most likely not be much support from those Mil members that are married to civilians that don't get that extra BAH every month so they can live in a bigger, nicer house.

It would be nice if they could change the pay structure as talked about in this thread, the problem with that is it would not save any money and that's what Congress and the Pentagon have in their sights right now. It seems logical that Congress will take aim at this issue since it effects a small percentage in the military and they won't feel a large immediate blow back. It's funny that nobody seems concerned about the overall lowering of BAH by 5% over the next few years.

 

[Pima]

It is funny to me that nobody has addressed sequestration.

Am I wrong that the DoD is forced still to cut costs?

It's funny that nobody seems concerned about the overall lowering of BAH by 5% over the next few years.

Actually what is funny or sad is that are AD members have received annual pay raises for the past few years at 0.5-1.0% over COLA. That our retirees that served for 20+ years have pay raises below COLA.

I don't get that after 2 pages nobody has addressed sequestration and the impact on the DoD budget. Will any of you say that if sequestration did not exist this would have occurred?

 

[hornetguy]

There seems to be a lot of back and forth about whether BAH is part of a service members total pay compensation, it seems pretty clear from just it's name, "Basic Allowance for Housing", what it's intended for.

1. It's not pretty clear otherwise the military would actively monitor to make sure it is used for housing and only housing. Same for BAS.
2. For civilians, its pretty well assumed your salary includes what you need for housing. And there's no reason for a civilian employer to make that chunk explicit since there's no tax break for doing so. Military pay absent 'housing' is pretty terrible salary.
3. What if two married members wanted to live in two different homes and not together. Under these new rules, they can't do that either because they are within a 50 mile "commuting radius" of each other. Not only do they get a pay cut, but if they are within 50 miles of one another and don't want to live in the same home, they are penalized again. Quite a lot of micromanaging of these military married couples, but apparently a lot of people think they have the right to dictate their lives.

 

[MemberLG]

2. For civilians, its pretty well assumed your salary includes what you need for housing.

Tell that to some folks that work in DC with long commutes.

 

[MemberLG]

Will any of you say that if sequestration did not exist this would have occurred?

Yes, even without the sequestration, the DoD would had to figure out how to pay for their expansive toys and address the rising personnel costs. Given a choice, DoD will spend more on on their equipment than improve personnel compensation. The sequestration does makes it worse, but the sky hasn't fallen neither as some have predicted.

 

[raimius]

Some seem surprised that there is not universal condemnation in the military over this proposal, is that really a surprise. There will most likely not be much support from those Mil members that are married to civilians that don't get that extra BAH every month so they can live in a bigger, nicer house.

Probably because civilian pay does not label what portion of the paycheck is expected to be used for housing. Mil-civ couples that both work get two paychecks in accordance to their jobs. One doesn't take a pay cut when they get married. Neither should two mil members!