Everyday we welcome home our warriors and thank them for their service. But the public life of our military is often much different than the private day to day struggle so many face.
Men and women of our armed forces and their families are using more food stamps than in the past - redeeming them at nearly twice the civilian rate, according to Defense Commissary Agency.
From 2007 to 2008 the use of food stamps by military personnel and their dependents increased 25 percent, while Americans overall rose 13 percent.
Oops! I'm not being politically correct here. The government in an effort to remove the stigma of being poor renamed the food stamp program. It is now called by the acronym SNAP which stands for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
In addition to on base Family Assistance offices, many U.S. military installations now have a WIC office to assist dependents, The WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program is described by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who administers it, as: "WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding and non-breastfeeding postpartum mothers, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk."
The thought that such an acknowledgement of our military's' dependents being "at risk" while their fathers and mothers are risking their lives in our nation's service is inexcusable.
The United States currently has the largest deployment of National Guard since World War II. Some 45 percent of U.S. troops currently in Iraq and Afghanistan are reservists or Guardsman. More troops have been deployed to those locations than in all the wars since WWII.
Many of the lower pay grades of the active military as well as members of the reserve and National Guard are forced to supplement their military pay with the SNAP program.
I was unable to find definitive numbers from an objective source for the actual pay cuts many of our reservists and Guardsman have taken when they are called to active duty. Some organizations claim it to be as much as 70 percent.
While I am not advocating paying our citizen soldiers the equivalent of their private sector employers perhaps other measures could be put in place such as suspending interest payments on a mortgage they might have or, maybe placing a moratorium on credit card payments if the card is not being used.
Although it is just One Person's View, how can we as a nation allow men and women who are willing to pay the ultimate price be asked to have their families sacrifice more than the uncertainty of the lives of their loved ones?
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