Lawmakers target troops’ housing allowance

(WASHINGTON TIMES) Lawmakers want to trim the fat in the defense budget by targeting service members’ housing stipends.

Senators are using a draft of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2017 (NDAA) to change the Basic Allowance for Housing system (BAH). The goal is to move away from a flat-rate stipend based on rank and family status to a system that only allocates benefits for rent and utilities costs. The current system allows troops to pocket savings.

“While service members paid as much as 22 percent of their housing costs out-of-pocket in the decades preceding the change to the current system in the late 1990s, by 2006, out-of-pocket expenses were eliminated entirely, and indeed, in certain circumstances, as demonstrated by a recent US Army Audit Agency (USAAA) audit, the benefit now far exceeds the actual cost of housing borne by some service members,” a recent Senate report on NDAA said, the Daily Caller reported Sunday.

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