This means having enough people to do the job and providing them the right training and equipment. It also means ensuring service members have decent pay, quality housing and health care, and a good education for their children. Health care, Cohen noted, is certainly the most emotional issue for service members. If they're deployed and they call their family back home, they want to know they're getting good care. Recent efforts to improve service members' quality of life have included the largest pay increase in nearly two decades, pay table reform and a return to the 50 percent retirement benefit.
Efforts are under way to improve health care and housing.
It sounds unfair. It is unfair. And it's not only 15 percent. National surveys show it's closer to 19 percent. This year we are going to bring that down from 19 percent to 15 percent, and then with the support of Congress we're going down to zero over the next five years.