The Department of Defense Should Adopt New Clothing Allowances

The current method of paying clothing maintenance allowance to enlisted military personnel provides reimbursement before clothing expenses are actually incurred, and for clothing replacement that will not occur under normal conditions. An alternative would be to provide an annual allowance for each year of service equal to the cost of all clothing items requiring replacement during that year, based on reasonable estimates of clothing wear-out rates under normal conditions.

The alternative would reduce clothing allowance expenditures by approximately $10 million in the first year and could be implemented with minimal cost and effort. Career enlisted members would benefit because the allowance would more closely reflect replacement costs. Special allowances for Navy chief petty officers have not been fully substantiated and appear to be significantly overstated.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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