Durbin Chairs Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Hearing on DOD Budget Issues

Press Release

Today U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) chaired a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Fiscal Year 2015 funding requests for the Department of Defense (DOD). Durbin also questioned both Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, on how growing expenditures for the Tuition Assistance program and MyCAA, for military spouses, have impacted DOD's budget. Durbin suggested that the DOD should be taking a more proactive role in preventing servicemembers from signing up with predatory for-profit colleges in order to save millions of dollars and help protect servicemembers and their families. Durbin also noted that ending the practice of discounting tobacco products for servicemembers would not only save the Department money, but would also save lives.

For-Profit Colleges

For-profit institutions aggressively recruit veterans, servicemembers, and their families in order to access millions in unregulated taxpayer funding. Some for-profit colleges charge nearly twice the tuition rate of public universities for a degree which is, in many cases, largely useless. For-profit colleges only enroll 10% of college students, but receive more than 20% of Department of Education financial aid dollars and account for 46% of all student loan defaults.

In November 2013, Durbin introduced the Protecting Our Students and Taxpayers (POST) Act with U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) and U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN) to eliminate the loophole that allows for-profit colleges to receive more than 90% of their revenue from the federal government. As Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Durbin secured a portion of the POST Act in the Defense Department Appropriations Act of FY2014 -- the language requiring the inclusion of DOD's voluntary military education programs (Tuition Assistance for servicemembers and MyCAA for their spouses) in the federal 90/10 calculation.

Tobacco in the Military

The DOD directs exchanges to gives a 5 percent discount on tobacco products to all servicemembers, although, studies have shown that, in practice, these discounts can be significantly higher. 24 percent of the military smokes versus 20 percent of the U.S. population and 13 percent of the military use smokeless tobacco versus 2 percent of the U.S. population. The DOD also spends $1.6 billion a year on tobacco-related medical care and lost work. In March, Durbin joined Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) , Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) on a letter to U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, urging the department to prohibit the sale of tobacco products aboard naval bases and ships, a move the department is currently considering. The Navy already prohibits the sale of tobacco at most of its Naval commissaries, and in 2012, it eliminated discounts on tobacco sales at Naval exchanges. Full text of the letter is below.

"One in three members of the military today says they started after they enlisted. Why? Well, because we make it easy for them. We make it easy because for some reason the Department of Defense decided to put in a discount for tobacco," Durbin said. "Tobacco may be the best bargain the military sells."

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