"This work would not have happened without With Honor and the For Country Caucus. Chrissy and I first started working together in 2019 through the [For Country Caucus], and that work led to this major initiative we led together. With Honor Action was the first partner we turned to from the very beginning - before we officially launched the panel with the House Armed Services Committee. These results are going to make a major impact on hundreds of thousands of our servicemen and women and their families. Thank you!"

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE)

Chair of the Military Quality of Life Panel, Founding Co-Chair of the For Country Caucus, and U.S. Air Force veteran

As a veteran-led organization, With Honor knows well the difficulties that those who choose a life of military service, as well as their families, will face. Military recruiters are confronting the most significant hurdles in the 50-year history of our all-volunteer force, including the residual health and social effects of COVID-19, a historically strong job market, and the declining number of veterans in society who can speak to the values of military service.

“In the Army’s most challenging recruiting year since the start of the all-volunteer force, we will only achieve 75% of our fiscal year 22 recruiting goal,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at the time. That year, nearly every individual military branch either missed or barely achieved its recruitment goal.

With Honor has worked to make the military quality of life a defining issue for Congress, and we have worked closely with Members of the House’s For Country Caucus on several key pieces of legislation that recognize and respond to the needs of a new generation of servicemembers and their families.

Food Insecurity

Simply put, servicemembers and their families should not go hungry. And yet, nearly 26% of active duty servicemembers are considered food insecure and nearly 15% rely on SNAP (food stamps) or food banks, according to a 2023 Rand study. In 2021, With Honor worked successfully to enact the Military Hunger Prevention Act, which established the Basic Needs Allowance (BNA) to support low-income servicemembers and their families who are not eligible for SNAP. We continue working to advance legislation that expands the program’s eligibility and effectiveness, including the:

  • Military Food Security Act, introduced by Reps. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Blake Moore (R-UT), which would not count military housing allowances as income when determining eligibility for BNA, removing a major obstacle that RAND estimates has prevented nearly 23,000 servicemembers and their families from receiving this modest stipend.
  • Military Family Nutrition Act, introduced by Reps. Panetta (D-CA) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Senators Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), which would not count BNA as income when determining eligibility for SNAP.
  • BNA (Basic Needs Allowance) Fairness Act, introduced by Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) and former Rep. Dan Kildee(D-MI), which would exclude BNA from income tax.

Military Spouse Employment

In March 2024, Blue Star Families found that 49% of active duty families listed spouse employment as a major issue for them and 30% of such families listed spouse unemployment or underemployment as a top contributor to financial stress. Constant relocations consistently surfaced as a contributor to spouse unemployment, due to such challenges as license transferability, loss in seniority, and the military’s general lack in transparency and flexibility for employment during a servicemember’s permanent change of station (PCS). We worked to advance the following legislation:

  • Resilient Employment and Authorization Determination to Increase National Employment of Serving Spouses (READINESS) Act, introduced by Reps. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) and Don Bacon (R-NE), which would help all federal employees married to servicemembers when their servicemember receives Permanent Change of Station (PCS) orders by letting those employees request remote work or reassignment, or to be put on non-pay status to preserve their seniority.

Military Housing

Cockroach infestations, black mold, and exposure to lead paint underscore the deteriorating conditions of U.S. military housing. Public reporting on the conditions of many military barracks and privatized housing spotlighted what the Government Accountability Office called a lack of oversight of Defense Department military housing. We worked to advance the following legislation:

  • Military Housing Transparency and Accountability Act, introduced by Reps. Salud Carbajal (D-CA) and Glenn “GT” Thompson (R-PA), which would require the Defense Department to develop and deploy a tool for servicemembers and their families to provide feedback on their housing and to cover not only privatized housing but unaccompanied housing as well.
  • BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing) Restoration Act, introduced by Reps. Bacon and Marilyn Strickland (D-WA) and Senators Raphael Warnock (D-GA) and Murkowski, which would increase the Basic Allowance for Housing to 100% of determined housing costs, up from 95%.

Access to Mental and Maternal Healthcare

Today’s all-volunteer military force is the most diverse in our nation’s history and is more integrated along gender lines than ever before, making it different in nature and character from that of previous generations.With those new realities in mind, addressing the scourge of post-traumatic stress disorder and veteran suicide begins by caring for our servicemembers’ mental health while they are still serving. We worked to advance the following legislation:

  • Maintaining our Obligation to Moms who Serve (MOMS) Act, introduced by Reps Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) and Don Bacon and Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Deb Fischer (R-NE), which would require the Defense Department to establish a pilot program to assess the feasibility of providing evidence-based treatment to prevent or reduce the onset of perinatal mental health conditions.
  • Supporting Mental Health for Military Children Act, introduced by Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), which would establish a routine mental health checkup pilot program for students at Defense Department-run schools.

The House Armed Services Committee’s Military Quality of Life Panel

Recognizing an opportunity to address the many quality of life issues that our servicemembers and their families face, the House Armed Services Committee announced in June 2023 that it was creating a Military Quality of Life Panel. Led by Rep. and For Country Caucus founding Co-Chair Bacon and Rep. and founding Vice Chair Houlahan, the panel also includes Reps. and For Country Caucus members Morgan Luttrell (R-TX) and Don Davis (D-NC).

The bipartisan group held hearings over several months, meeting with the Senior Enlisted Leaders from every service branch, Defense Department officials, servicemember and military family organizations, and, most importantly, military families. The panel focused on several core areas which most shape the military quality of life: compensation (particularly for the junior enlisted servicemembers), food insecurity, degraded military housing, access to medical and mental healthcare, childcare, and issues related to frequent moves, including spousal employment and license transferability.

Military Quality of Life Panel Hearings