The American Legion and National Military Family Association hosted the gathering in Washington, D.C., to discuss the needs of servicemembers and their families.
The American Legion and National Military Family Association (NMFA) co-hosted a luncheon on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., Thursday, April 24, to advocate on improvements, implementation and oversight of quality-of-life issues for military family members.
The ability for NMFA to host the luncheon alongside The American Legion with congressional staff and other veteran service organizations in attendance “is hugely important because The American Legion represents and speaks on behalf of our country’s veterans, and the fact that military families are included and are an important part of this conversation says a lot because if we don’t include families, we’re only having a part of that conversation,” said Besa Pinchotti, CEO of NMFA. “Military family life and military family transition doesn’t just happen to the servicemember, it happens to the entire military family.”
American Legion Executive Director of Government Affairs Mario Marquez emphasized that military quality of life is a national security issue if servicemembers and their families don’t have the things that they need back home to execute their missions when called upon.
“Without a sustainable and resilient military force that is continuously ready and ready to operate without having to worry about issues on the home front, then it’s a matter of national security,” he said. Marquez added that while the military can have state of the art warfare with drones, AI and cybersecurity, you need people to operate the warfare. Before retiring from the Marine Corps after 31 years, he had a saying that “We can have all the fifth-generation stuff we want. But if I don’t have a fifth-generation Marine, then what’s the point of having all that stuff? And quality of life feeds into that fifth generation. Now sixth generation.”
Issues facing military families today are access to affordable childcare, housing and healthcare, and food security. These are a few of the many that The American Legion has heard during its military base visits conducted under its Base Assessment and Servicemember Experience (BASE) program, launched in 2022, that focuses on addressing and improving the quality of life for servicemembers and their families.
Junior enlisted servicemembers received a 14.5% pay increase, and all other servicemembers a 4.5% pay increase, under the Fiscal Year 2025 National Defense Authorization Act, which Pinchotti said military families have shared with NMFA that it’s helped ease the financial burden that they were facing with putting food on the table and paying for childcare.
A few priorities not included in the NDAA that NMFA hopes to see included is referral for specialty care, basic allowance to cover 100% of housing cost, TRICARE to cover IVF for currently serving servicemembers and their families, and a less financial burden for military families who have a permanent change of station as out of pocket cost is about $5,000.
“I hope military families know that we’re here talking about them, for them, every single day of the year,” Pinchotti said, adding that the military quality of life luncheon was “really important because we have the people in the room who can actually make a difference. And so putting this information and these recommendations and this energy in front of Congress, I think will go a long way in supporting the families that we served.”
Marquez’s hope with the military quality of life luncheon with those in attendance is that “we can be better advocates as a community for not only implementation of congressional law that has already been passed but also the oversight and the continued improvements and anything that has not been rectified or passed in law yet.”
- Security