The Pentagon is reportedly planning to cut overseas service members’ cost-of-living allowances next month, even as it continues to subsidize travel for its employees to get abortions.
According to Military.com, the Defense Department “announced in May that service members stationed overseas, including troops in Alaska and Hawaii, would see cuts to their cost-of-living allowance.” While the first cut in allowances occurred on May 15, the second is slated to happen on Nov. 15 and will be reflected in service members’ Dec. 1 paychecks. More than 230,000 military members receive these payments, according to the outlet.
The purpose of overseas cost-of-living allowances, or OCOLA, is to help service members stationed in remote locations offset costs of basic necessities that are typically more expensive due to their base’s distance from the contiguous United States. Increased inflation and changing currency rates, however, have supposedly resulted in “the gap … diminish[ing], leading to the cuts.”
“OCOLA is based on a service member’s spendable income and does not consider money a spouse earns,” Military.com explained. “It’s calculated by comparing the price of goods and services overseas with the average cost for equivalent products in the States, which creates an index for the cost-of-living allowance. Service members receive an increase only if costs are higher overseas compared to prices stateside.”
Unnamed senior defense officials tried to justify the cuts, claiming in May that an “across-the-board” pay raise for service members this year will result in a “higher take-home pay even with OCOLA reductions than what they had
