title:  Shameful: Republican Senate’s New Scheme Is Going To Hurt Soldiers’ Wallets Badly
text: Republicans have found a new way to hurt the pockets of the working class   and this time they re going so low as to strip pay away from military personnel. In June, the Republican-controlled Senate passed military budget cuts that no one asked for. Part of the budget calls for reforming how service members are compensated each month for their housing expenses.The way the current system works, service members receive a monthly stipend called the Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH). The amount of money service members received each month is based on several metrics such as rank, the number of dependents, and marital status. Service members are able to pocket any cash they have left over after they re housing expenses have paid for. That s all about to change.Mother Jones reports: The measure in the Senate bill, which passed with approval from the Armed Services Committee, would make the housing stipend cover only soldiers  actual bills.  Soldiers would provide copies of their rents or mortgages and get reimbursed only for what they spent, up to a maximum payable limit. Soldiers sharing housing would have their allowances divided by the number of service members sharing the space. The changes would cost many soldiers hundreds of dollars of a month. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the move would save $2 billion over the next five years. That $ 2 billion dollars in savings is just pennies compared to what has already been saved due to reforms in Tricare, the military s medical program. Todd Harrison, who works as the director of defense budget analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies told Mother Jones that: Just the minor changes that Congress has made to the Tricare program over the past four or five years [are] now saving more than $5 billion a year each year in the defense budget,  he says,  and I think a lot of people would be hard-pressed to identify what those changes are.  Harrison went on to add that,  They re cutting back on exactly the types of compensation that people value most. Fortunately, the changes to how the BAH runs are not included in the House s version of the spending bill. Furthermore, the Senate s version still has many legislative hurdles to jump over before it actually could be implemented.It shouldn t be too surprising that Republicans would seize the opportunity to turn the current the current need to reduce military spending into an austerity program. After all, the lower rungs of the military   those who will be impacted by this bill the most   are much more likely to be racial minorities and those with a poor working class background. It s just like the GOP to create programs that do not do much more than increase inequality in the name of fiscal responsibility.Featured image via John Moore/Getty Images