The Under Secretary for Personnel and Readiness (USD (P&R)) is the principal staff assistant and advisor to the Secretary of Defense for Total Force Management as it relates to readiness, health affairs, training, personnel requirements, and quality-of-life matters. USD (P&R) is the Secretary’s senior policy advisor on recruitment, career development, and pay and benefits for military personnel and DOD civilians. The USD (P&R) oversees the Defense Health Program, Defense Commissary Agency, the Defense Education Activity, Defense Manpower Data Center, Military Community and Family Policy, and others. USD (P&R) responsibilities include, but are not limited to, developing policies, plans, and programs for compensation of military personnel and quality of life for military personnel and their families. Although included in the military compensation system as a non-cash benefit, DOD commissaries can be considered a food assistance program in that the commissaries provide servicemembers an opportunity to purchase food at reduced cost. Active-duty servicemembers receive a compensation package that includes cash compensation, non-cash compensation, and deferred compensation. Non-cash compensation includes various types of benefits such as health care, child-care centers, educational benefits, and access to subsidized commissaries (i.e., grocery stores). DOD operates a worldwide chain of commissaries that sell food and related household items to active-duty, reserve and guard members of the military services, retirees of these military services, their families, and other authorized patrons. According to the Defense Commissary Agency’s Annual Financial Report Fiscal Year 2015, DOD’s 240 commissaries sold $5.5 billion of items to approximately 5.3 million households in fiscal year 2015. Commissaries sell food and related household items to authorized patrons at cost plus a 5-percent surcharge, which DOD estimates saves patrons an average of more than 30 percent on their purchases compared to commercial prices. The Defense Commissary Agency wrote in its report that it received $1.3 billion in appropriation transfers during fiscal year 2015. The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service has responsibility for administering most of the federal domestic food and nutrition programs, including the five largest programs. As the federal government’s primary domestic food assistance agency, USDA aims to help households achieve food security—that is, to have consistent, dependable access to enough food for an active, healthy life—and monitors the extent and severity of food insecurity. The Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security also fund programs that provide food and nutrition assistance. In May 2015, we testified before Congress that, in fiscal year 2014, the federal government spent more than $100 billion on 18 domestic food assistance programs. Specifically, we identified that program spending ranged from approximately $5 million on the Community Food Projects Competitive Grants Program to more than $74 billion on SNAP. Our testimony also stated that in fiscal year 2014, the five largest food assistance programs—SNAP, National School Lunch Program (NSLP), WIC, School Breakfast Program (SBP), and the Child and Adult Care Food Program—accounted for 96 percent of total spending on the 18 programs. SNAP, the largest program, accounted for more than 70 percent of the overall spending total. SNAP, NSLP, SBP, and the Child and Adult Care Food Program are entitlement programs, meaning that federal law requires benefits to be provided to all applicants who meet eligibility requirements. Active-duty servicemembers and their families have access to food assistance through various government and charitable programs, but their eligibility for some government food assistance programs can vary based on the programs’ income criteria and servicemembers’ location. Active-duty servicemembers and their families have access to food assistance through a variety of government and charitable sources. For example, in a testimony before Congress on May 2015, we identified 18 selected federal government programs that focus primarily on providing food and nutrition assistance, such as SNAP and WIC, to low-income individuals and households. Active-duty servicemembers and their families may apply to any of these programs, and can receive benefits if they meet the eligibility requirements. Appendix II provides a general description of these 18 programs as well as the target population. Additionally, DOD provides active-duty servicemembers with FSSA. By design, the FSSA program increases a servicemember’s income by an amount to preclude them from applying for benefits under the SNAP program. However, the NDAA for fiscal year 2016 restricted the availability of FSSA to only servicemembers stationed outside the United States and its territories starting October 1, 2016. Servicemembers stationed in the United States and its territories and in need of food assistance previously provided by FSSA are expected to apply to the SNAP program. In addition to the government food assistance programs, active-duty servicemembers and their families can seek assistance from a variety of charitable organizations. For example, each military service has a charitable organization such as the Army Emergency Relief that, depending on the type of assistance needed, is able to provide servicemembers with grants or interest-free loans that can be used to purchase food and to help meet any other immediate needs they may have in an emergency situation. During our visits to four selected military installations, we also found that additional assistance may be available to active-duty servicemembers and their families through locally-developed initiatives, such as food pantries, that are typically organized by volunteers to address food assistance needs at a particular military installation. Many of the food pantries we examined were local operations intended to meet emergency needs; however, at one of the military installations we visited there were four food pantries operating on the installation that provided food routinely once a month. Table 1 provides further details about some of the different types of food assistance available to active-duty servicemembers and their families. An applicant’s income must be below a given level in order to qualify for benefits from the government food assistance programs. To develop an understanding of how active-duty servicemembers could meet the financial criteria, we compared the base income for servicemembers in a specific paygrade with the income eligibility requirements for five government food assistance programs that are commonly used by active- duty servicemembers and their families. Specifically, these five programs include DOD’s FSSA—the only food assistance program offered through DOD—and four USDA programs, including SNAP, WIC, NSLP, and SBP. These programs’ statutory authorities define the financial criteria as a maximum income limit by household or family size. Our comparison enabled us to develop an understanding of the size of household or family a servicemember in a specific paygrade would need in order to qualify for a program. Although other factors beyond household or family size and base income affect servicemembers’ eligibility for these food assistance programs, our analysis is generally limited to these factors in order to isolate the effect of income on eligibility. Further, we recognize that to receive benefits the servicemember would also have to meet the program’s non-financial eligibility requirements, which are detailed in appendix III. Given that, we compared the basic pay and allowances of a servicemember in the E-4 paygrade with maximum income eligibility criteria for the five government food assistance programs commonly used by active-duty servicemembers and their families and determined the minimum household or family size the servicemember needed in order to qualify for each program. We selected the paygrade of E-4 in part because it includes junior enlisted personnel who are compensated at the lower end of the pay scale for active-duty servicemembers. Further, DOD’s data on FSSA recipients showed that servicemembers in the paygrade of E-4 were the most frequent recipients of this allowance, thus suggesting that there may be food assistance needs more commonly experienced by personnel at this paygrade. The results of our analysis are presented in Figure 1 and show that a servicemember’s income eligibility will likely vary based on where he or she lives and the program through which one applies for food assistance. We found that each of the government food assistance programs included in our review requires that an applicant’s household or family income falls below a specified amount to qualify for benefits and that this income limit varies by program and sometimes by state. Further, including BAH benefits in a determination of an applicant’s income eligibility also plays a role in the food assistance programs used by active-duty servicemembers and their families. Specifically, we found that it might be easier for servicemembers to qualify for WIC than SNAP or FSSA because WIC allows state agencies to choose to exclude BAH from income. For example, based on our analysis a servicemember at Naval Base San Diego, California, would need a minimum household size of 3 to qualify for WIC benefits, but would require a minimum household size of 7 to qualify for SNAP benefits and a minimum household size of 9 to qualify for FSSA. We also found that servicemembers may be more likely to qualify for free or reduced- price meals from NSLP and SBP if they reside in privatized housing than if they live in the local community because the eligibility criteria for those programs do not count BAH as income for servicemembers living in privatized military housing. For example, based on our analysis a servicemember residing in privatized military housing on Camp Pendleton in California would require a minimum household size of 3 to qualify for reduced-price school meals compared to a servicemember residing in the local community who would need a minimum household size of 6 to qualify.