With Honor Action, a nonprofit that looks to promote and advance veteran leadership in public service, and lawmakers place 325 flags on the National Mall on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (Matthew Adams/Stars and Stripes)

WASHINGTON — When Rep. Chrissy Houlahan was a little girl growing up on naval bases, it was drilled into her how precious military pay was.

“My mother would walk around with envelopes of cash every month that this was for food, and this one was for clothes and this one was for medicine. She would open her envelopes for food at the commissary,” the Democrat from Pennsylvania said Tuesday. Houlahan’s father was a Navy aviator.

Rand Corporation published a study in 2023 showing more than 25% of active-duty service members lack consistent access to enough food for their households. The study, which Congress directed the Pentagon to sponsor as part of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, also found 15.4% of troops would be classified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as not having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.

Houlahan, along with six other lawmakers, placed 325 flags on the National Mall to represent and bring awareness to the 325,000 service members who are considered food insecure, according to With Honor Action, a nonprofit that promotes and advances veteran leadership in public service. The group hosted the event with lawmakers on Tuesday near the Capitol.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., places flags on the National Mall on Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2024. (Matthew Adams/Stars and Stripes)

“I know that there’s a lot of pushback right now. Fixing things like housing might be a priority, which is great but you can’t eat housing. It’s really, really important that we emphasize just the vastness of this,” said Houlahan, who was an Air Force captain.

The fiscal 2025 NDAA, an annual bill that outlines defense priorities and spending, gives troops a 4.5% pay raise. The House version of the legislation includes an additional 15% pay raise for junior enlisted service members. The Senate Appropriations Committee in August unanimously advanced a version of the Pentagon spending bill that includes funding to cover a 5.5% pay bump for E-1s through E-3s and a 4.5% raise for all other troops.

“I’ve said this in hearings before that we have junior enlisted who make at the poverty level or under the poverty level. So, I think it is important that we are here to bring attention to this matter and that for members of Congress to understand it is really important [that] lives are affected when we can’t bring our act together and pass our budgets on time,” said Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks, R-Iowa, after placing some flags on Tuesday.

The findings in the Rand study are at odds with the conventional wisdom that those most prone to food insecurity in the ranks are junior enlisted members with large families. Instead, the report found the majority of those affected, 67%, were early- to mid-career enlisted personnel between the pay grades of E-4 and E-6.

The call for attention to troops struggling to feed their families comes as congressional lawmakers on Sunday agreed to a deal to avert a looming government shutdown Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.

The House is expected to vote Wednesday on a temporary funding extension, known as a continuing resolution. The Senate is expected to do the same shortly thereafter. It is expected to pass both chambers and be signed by President Joe Biden.

The Pentagon has long balked at the use of stopgap funding measures, which Congress has passed to begin new fiscal years in 15 of the last 16 years. In 2024, Congress did not pass a full Pentagon budget until late March.

In a letter to Congress this month, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote a six-month continuing resolution would cost the Pentagon more than $6 billion compared to his 2025 spending proposal, and it would stall some $4.3 billion in research projects and delay some $10 billion in expected military construction projects.

“It’s unfortunate that it takes a display like this to highlight an issue that can be detrimental to our national security, and that’s our food security amongst the ranks of our military members. So making sure that we not just come out here and plant flags but that we actually do something in the United States Congress,” said Rep. Jimmy Panetta, D-Calif.