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to make sense of the numbers is deborah, the director of research and policy of blue star families an organization that supports military families and on skype a u.s. army captain and graduate fellow at texas and kevin is an airforce veteran who has written on the topic and skeptical about being cause for alarm and suzanne is a military spouse and husband active duty in the airforce and relied on food stamps and welcome to all of you. deborah is the middle class way of life that people associate the military having provided for decades on its way out? >> i don't know that it's on its way out but what we do see is we see a big differential as

enlisted and those who join as officers so your base salary for e 1 who is somebody just joining as enlisted is $20,000 and you see an officer coming in at about $40,000 so when you talk about these issues such as poverty and food stamps there is this big pay differential that you see and so you can imagine somebody who is making 20,000 and has 2.5 children, that doesn't go very far. so you can see that there are some struggles there. >> yeah, indeed. suzanne, the numbers that we referenced getting into the show are incomplete at best because that is all that is available. but they certainly indicate more military families could be hovering around the poverty line, is there an untold story here in your opinion? >> i think there definitely is. i think the biggest problem is that anybody receiving welfare in general usually feel as lot

of shame, a lot of gift, the fact they are receiving it period is not something they want to share so when it comes to the military, it definitely carries a higher amount of that. i know that we received them from about six months after he got here for about 2 1/2 years continuing through that and the reason when we would go in to do any kind of paperwork, anything like that, we were almost looked at to the point of why are you here. you should make enough money and it was that way until they decided to stop or decided to start counting our house as allowance of income. >> back and forth about the number, here is a formula, economic crash plus multiple deployments, growing families and reduced focus on vets equals increased need for assistance hash tag military and doom to

handle response and taken out of context, see the average after 1500 a month, housing allowance plus 200 and 400 food allowance and free medical. conflicting numbers, we have 136 million in food stamps redeemed this year and quadrupled in the last five years and in 2011 there were 5,000 families using food stamps and reduced to 2000, what is happening? is it increasing? is it getting worse for them? >> i think all of the guesses so far have been right. since 2006 we have seen the numbers quadruple from 26 million to now about 104 million in redeeming snap benefits and i think what this is reflecting is in part the financial crisis in 2008 and changing demographics of the 21st century volunteer force and soldiers are coming in more experienced and seasoned

and maybe with a spouse or partner, mouths to feed and maybe making a career transition and the private sector and financial crisis was tough and see long-term stability in the military lifestyle and making the transition in their mid to late 20s whereas i think i prototypical young enlisted soldier is 18, 19 years old right out of high school and without a family. >> you are an airforce veteran and wrote an article why our military is on welfare and you are skeptical this is problematic, why so? >> we always talk about how the base pay is real low. and it's true the base pay is low but typically military members are given things such as bah, this is money to pay for housing, food, and stuff like that. you take that into consideration it actually raises what a

military member would be making. >> suzanne does it raise it enough to make i easy to make end meet? >> no. i have -- i don't have a problem sharing this because quite honestly it's public information that is easy to find. my husband has housing and the amount is $1062 because we reside in on base houseing and don't see any of that so we don't have extra costs as of now. the dod did implement a new system to pay access electrical usage so sometime this year they are going to charge over or charge under based on their average they picked up from checking houses and seeing what we should be using. and bas is a supplement to cover my husband getting fed since he is not eating at the town hall as a single person and that is

$357 a month. so you break it down i mean it's not really making enough of an impact. >> suzanne, our community is chiming in who to blame for the financial insecurity, is it the government or politics or soldiers over spending and using the military as a system that has more than enough money and benefits to support employees and politics and lousy left and right and politicians enjoy the board room and back stab soldiers by cutting benefits or a weak economy which doesn't help anyone, deborah who is it to blame? >> a couple points about what the last guest said. i think it's important to note some of these benefits are there for a reason and they are for retention and recruitment and we want to get the best people in the military. we want the best people to stay in the military. somebody mentioned healthcare.

one of the reasons why we have a good healthcare system in the military is because we need to have a ready force. we need healthy service members. and so that is why we have the healthcare system that we do. another guest mentioned bas. that is assistance of food. >> yes, those amounts are very low. and if you look at an average family with 2.5 kids, the usda has statistics about this, the average expenditure for food is about $8-900 per month. if you look at an e 1 who is making $20,000, even with that bas added in, even if you have housing added in, if you are spending $8-900 a month which is on the low end you don't have a lot left over. >> not cutting it, u sda and we reached to the usda and department of defense and usda

said it would provide additional data and we did not receive by air but promised them in the next 24 hours and we will post them when we get them and he could not appear on the show but gave a statement that says military compensation compares favorably with the private sector and allowed them to succeed in recruiting and retaining of the high quality volunteer force by the nation despite a decade at war and starting in january of this year they have started keeping track of who is using these food stamp benefits at the comisary and will have the data to check back a year from now and see what they come up with. putting food on the table is not the only challenge facing military families and the numbers will shock you the suppo supposes are unemployed four times the national average.

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♪ i am a former military officer and author of green on blue and i'm on the stream. >> welcome back, we are talking about financial structurals for military families and susan before the break i promised to look at employment for military husbands and wives 30%, that is how many of our military spouses age 18-24 are unemployed. that is a huge amount way beyond the national average, what impact does that have on a family's financial stability? >> it's a multi facetted problem definitely. i think the biggest problem that we face specifically is child care. i know that is a promising term.

i have about six years of retail experience, after that in management and i never made over $8.25 an hour so if i went to take that full-time i would actually pay more out-of-pocket to work 40 hours a week including child care than i would to just stay at home. it's hard to do post secondary education because you don't know if you want to move and schools change how they transfer credits and if it will be worth anything at the next school, if your program will transfer and you may have to repeat classes which i already had to do. >> military families move around a lot, is that something that employers shy away from when they found out you married somebody in the military and don't want to spend the money if you will leave in a few months? >> we have been here an uncommon amount of time but i have trouble putting in applications to just a part-time retail to bring in a little extra money and the first thing they address

is the schedule. if he changes his schedule or if he has to worknights or evenings there is nothing i can do about that. i have no precedence over his schedule. that is a big stopper. >> communities are echoing this and military spouses who are treating in and say this is a two income economy spouse employment challenges have been a hurdle for the family and fellow military spouses as the military wife says i don't work because i cannot rely on a significant other to help with the kids while i worknights, schedule and duty night changes weekly and it's the constant moving and spouse not being able to find a job or start a career and multiple redeployments is hard and chelsea who gave a great video comment. >> the struggle i face as a military spouse is uncertainty and it's hard to plan for the future when my current situation is not permanent. >> debbie, you are a military

spouse and talk about the unique challenges that most americans never hear about. >> what you have on social media is exactly what we find every year on our survey. and they are sent a survey to military families and last year we had 5100 responding so we are talking about a big sample size and they echo exactly what you're saying here, uncertainty in military life, child care, pcs moves, these are all the things that impact spouse employment which is a huge -- has a huge financial impact on military families especially if you are at the low end of these pay grade and you need that second income to make end meet. if your spouse is not employed and you talked about the 30% unemployment rate among military spouses. that compares to about 8% unemployment rate among normal civilians as a whole. so, you know, it's a much higher rate. and that has an impact on what families have in their

pocketbook. >> there is a disproportional credit card debt and militarys with more than 10,000 in debt is 27% compared to 16% in the civilian population, is this an issue of financial literacy? is this just a consequence of having a one spouse working in what should be a two working household, to what do you attribute this? >> well, i think you can definitely, we are hitting the nail on the head. in this day and age you do need both spouses working. you can't really depend on one income anymore and this is not just military, this is in the civilian world also. so i can definitely see the moving around would make it harder for a spouse to find jobs so you don't have that second income readily available.

but you know this is not just military, this is civilian world too. as far as debt goes, i know it is real easy to get loans in the military because the banks know that you have that steady income. if you have a four-year contract, they know that you're making this much for you know a set amount of time so it's easy for them to give out loans. whenever i wanted a loan, i wanted a car loan, they were real quick to give that to me so that could be part of the problem with the debt. >> lisa, if i may jump in for a moment and echo kevin's sentiment here and part of the problem with debt is that some of this money is too much available, too available to service members in terms of creditorry lending. there are a lot of pay day lenders out there and every state's policy differ on the issue but who seek out the military and service members who are young, imappreciable to look

to buy a car perhaps or something of the sort and they will record all the service member's information beyond the personal and professional. so they will look to chain of command to leverage pressure on the service member if he or she is not paying up on time. it's a real problem. >> brandon, a lot of our communities chimed in about the proposed spending bill and the effect on military families and dod department of defense seems to budget for the military industrial complex leaving the men and women who do the fighting out in the cold and it's sad when the military on food stamps and the party are cutting them and other benefits and we have one more, requirement to serve in the military before one can be a congressman and woman and i know you wanted to talk about this, proposed spending budget, what do you think, what effect do you think it will have on military

families? >> what is happening now is there is a lot of uncertainty in military life and people are accustom to that but now you have a lot of moves parts, a lot of things changing at once and all of them having financial implications so you have potential changes in the comisary benefit. >> million dollar potential change. >> yeah, actually not potential changes, they are changes now, now the budget has been approved. you have changes in healthcare expenses. you have changes in housing allowance and all of those things are basically add up and are essentially money out of people's pocket. >> changes buying power with a broader economic impact as well doesn't it? >> i imagine it will. >> coming up, that defense spending bill looks to cut a sizable number of troops on active duty but the financial challenges don't end when they take off the uniform. we will talk about that when we come back. ♪

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♪ welcome back, we are talking about the challenges financially that military families face and before the break we mentioned the challenges don't end when these folks leave the armed services. >> i'm learning a lot, you assume it's a long-term career but a lot want to go to civilian careers and there are not a lot to transition to and homeless vets in the country. as a former army chaplain, they deserve decent pay. it's hard for separated military members to get jobs and my husband has been out eight months, two degrees and still no job. as a young airman with a family i was fortunate enough to find part time jobs lisa pumping gas, short order cooking, cleaning whatever to make end meet and we will go to you and your husband

will transition out of the military, what are some unique challenges he is looking forward to when he wants to transition from military to civilian life, have you guys thought about this yet? >> you know the uncertainty specifically that was brought up earlier, we always have some uncertainty but especially with the budget and healthcare changing, all of those things and i made a statement about it and what he does is he is a jet engine mechanic that is in pretty high demand especially with the experience and licensing he has especially back home where we are from in kansas. even with all of that we kinds of put feels out there to see what he can find and with training and experience there were many times where they had no openings regardless. so it was very, you know, that is pretty much what made our decision, we really don't have a decision at this point other than to stay in. >> brandon, early on in the show susan alluded to this idea that

it was difficult and maybe in some cases more difficult for members of the military to ask for help because they go to the co and it can feel shameful and you can feel compromised by doing that. so even though you have these programs available to folks in the military for assistance, do you find that it's harder for them maybe to seek you out and get that help? >> well, i think often it can be shameful for some soldiers and families. like any family who is having financial trouble, the topics is often delicate and stressful. just within the family. so to air your financials to a chain of command and ask for help can be daunting and stigmatizing which is unfortunate and the army and military general have a strong safety net and we provide financial need to protect them from some of the predatory lenders out there and crippling financial debt that might await

them. but the transition as you mentioned lisa is so difficult and so important to civilian life. my wife is a vet and an army officer and transitioned out and working with the v.a. for health benefits and getting the resume ready and getting it to job fairs and interviews can be overwhelming. >> we were talking about this yesterday and feel like we have been seeing more commercials and hearing more radio spots with this corporate backing of veterans like pushing to higher veterans, focusing on their vast array of ability in the workforce. are you noticing more of that as well and is it making any sort of a difference, measurable difference? >> i think a lot of companies are recognizing the value of highering veterans and what they bring do the workplace and the same is true for military spouses, there is also a movement to hire military spouses and i think when they are in the military they learn

leadership skills and how to make decisions without all the information they need, they learn team work, these are all skills that are assets in the business environment and so i think companies are starting to see that and they are starting to see the value of hiring veterans and at the same time military spouses bring some of those things to the workplace as well and we have companies like usaa is a great example. their whole mission is focused on the military family but they also have a hiring mission, they hire veterans and military spouses and i would say a best practice in that. >> suzanne, we have about a minute left in the show and i want you to wrap it up for us and kind of give us your thoughts on what it's going to take to bring the stability of middle class sort of back to the military family, what needs to happen? >> i think the biggest thing that needs to be recognized is i think the majority of the public stands behind the military and

providing them with a fair income. i think there are some people that don't. the biggest thing i could say to anybody really is that this has been a normal career and a normal life and we are okay with that, okay with the everyday sacrifices. all we ask is things are not taken away to make it hard for us to live. usda saying we spent 8-900 on groceries and we spend 600 and we have three children with a fourth on the way and that is all i ask is things are not taken away. >> thanks for the guests for a terrific discussion and we will see you all on line.

>> welcome to aljazeera america. i'm david schuster here with the stories that we're following for you at this hour. jets strike an islamic state target in iraq. a briefing is this afternoon, and we'll bring those remarks to you when they happen. and talking about gaza, and the firing has resumed after rockets are fired into israeli and israelis respond. and in hawaii, a