A new study on military families released Thursday found that sequestration is more than just a Washington buzzword.
More than a quarter of the troops, family members and veterans who responded to the Blue Star Families 2016 Military Family Lifestyle Survey said they “felt changes in benefits, budget cuts and sequestration illustrated that commitments are not being kept for those who serve.” Only 19 percent of military families say they would recommend serving in the military to others “if the current trend of cutting benefits continues.”
The 2016 report marks the first time these specific questions about sequestration were asked as part of the survey, but write-in responses in 2015 suggested that financial insecurity was the biggest impact of sequestration.
Today, 66 percent of active-duty families said they would recommend military service to a young person, up from 57 percent last year, but only 43 percent would recommend it to their own children, down from 45 percent in the 2015 report.
Budget caps have hit the military hard over the past five years of sequestration, resulting in cuts to readiness hitting personnel the hardest. Troops have gone without training and pilots have been unable to fly because of budget constraints under sequestration.
Asked about the top reasons veterans left the military, a quarter said it was because of lost faith or trust in military and political leadership, according to a summary of the report. As an example of the eroded trust, 38 percent of active troops in the survey said they were not confident they would get the retirement benefits promised when they joined, though that’s an improvement from the 45 percent of respondents in 2015 who did not trust the government to provide the benefits it said it would.
Nearly one in five said cuts to the military budget or changes to benefits make them more likely to leave the military and find work in the civilian sphere, where 79 percent of those polled believe compensation outpaces the military.
Another finding in the annual report is worry about the high operational tempo that frequently takes service members away from their families for long periods of time. Nearly three-quarters of those polled said the current operational tempo creates an “unacceptable level of stress.” Operational tempo was also one of the top five issues for respondents in 2015.
In all three communities polled — military spouses, active-duty service members and veterans — military pay and benefits was the chief concern by the majority of people. This was also the top concern in the 2015 survey.
The seventh annual report from Blue Star Families collected responses from more than 8,300 active-duty troops, their family members and spouses and veterans between April and May.
