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Family food aid would rise under Senate plan

A Senate committee proposes to more than double the military’s Family Supplemental Subsistence Allowance in a move intended to keep troops from having to use food stamps.

The increase would apply to no more than 328 families by the Pentagon’s estimate, but it would deflect the larger public-relations problem created by the idea that military wages are low enough to drive some families to seek government assistance.

Congress created the allowance in 2000 as an extra payment of up to $500 a month to increase wages enough so military families would not qualify for what was then known as food stamps.

The payment would rise to $1,100 monthly under a provision of S 1390, the version of the 2010 defense authorization bill passed June 25 by the Senate Armed Services Committee. That should be enough for all military families to stay off food stamps — now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP — according to a panel report.

The FSSA, first paid in late 2001, was created at a time when about 14,000 military families were believed to be receiving food stamps, mostly large midgrade or junior enlisted families.

The issue of service members on food stamps gained renewed attention after a March visit with military families in North Carolina by first lady Michelle Obama.

One military spouse told Obama that her family was on food stamps while her husband was deployed in Iraq. “It’s not right,” Obama said in an ABC News interview after the visit.

In its report on the 2010 budget, the Senate committee notes the FSSA “was designed to alleviate the need” for service members to use food stamps and said it is “troubled” by the fact that the Pentagon is not tracking the number of military families receiving the assistance.

For a family of four, payments may be available if net income is $1,767 or less a month, although factors such as family savings, enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses received and even cars owned are part of the calculation.

Pentagon estimates show that an E-1 with a family of four would qualify for the allowance. An E-5 with a family of seven or more would qualify.

FSSA levels

When a service member’s income is a family’s only income, eligibility for the Family Supplemental Subsistence Allowance is based on these family sizes:

• E-1: 4 or more household members

• E-2/E-3: 5 or more

• E-4: 6 or more

• E-5: 7 or more

• E-6: 8 or more

• E-7: 9 or more

• E-8: 10 or more

• E-9: 11 or more

• O-1/O-2: 9 or more

• O-3: 10 or more

• O-4: 11 or more

• O-5: 12 or more

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