The changing terrain: Federal budget priorities
Military families have weighed in on what they believe should be the federal government’s top priority budget spending areas for 2017. Respondents to the most recent First Command Financial Behaviors Index® survey were asked to rank their top three most important budget investment priorities for next year. Here are their top-ranked issues:
- Military training and personnel: 31 percent
- Making healthcare more affordable: 30 percent
- Expanding support for veterans: 26 percent
- Investing in education: 22 percent
- Improving national infrastructure: 22 percent
- Military technology and systems: 22 percent
Three of the top six rankings are associated with specific military/veterans issues. With Congressional and Pentagon discussions about making changes to TRICARE, it’s not surprising that “making healthcare more affordable” ranked highly for military families. In the same survey, increased responsibility for healthcare costs was selected as a major sequestration-related concern by 30 percent of military respondents.
Military/veterans issues fell lower on the federal budget priority list for general population responders:
- Making healthcare more affordable: 47 percent
- Improving national infrastructure: 34 percent
- Investing in education: 29 percent
- Making college more affordable: 27 percent
- Expanding Social Security: 26 percent
- Investment in clean energy: 23 percent
Among these general population respondents, 22 percent selected expanding support for veterans, 17 percent selected military training and personnel, and 11 percent selected military technology and systems. Military families were less concerned with investment in clean energy (19 percent), expanding Social Security (17 percent) and making college more affordable (13 percent).
These survey responses were collected after the release of President Barack Obama’s fiscal 2017 budget request, which was sent to Congress in February.
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