This post will not blast any elected officials. This post will not talk about Congress or any of my own political opinions. Instead, I’m going to talk about how the potential shutdown that was narrowly averted last night would have impacted my soldiers.
As a company commander, I wear a lot of hats. I’m a counselor. I’m a teacher. I’m a financial advisor (in that I have to ask my soldiers why an E1 has a $250 a month cell phone bill). I’m a manager of the calendar. I’m the gal who says no, you may not take your platoon bowling or yes, you may take your platoon bowling. I’m a marriage counselor. I am judge and jury.
But as the impending shut down loomed closer last night, I was worried. As a commander, I had ordered my soldiers to report to work on Monday, regardless of whether or not their paychecks would arrive the following Friday. As a commander, I was suddenly fielding questions from my formation like ‘will my child support payments be made’ and when I said no, watching panic take hold. I was planning how we were going to get anything done when my soldiers had to bring their children to work because, well, if you had to choose between daycare and food, you’d probably choose food. I was planning car pool routes, because if you had to choose between gas and food, you’d probably choose food.
If you think I’m exaggerating about the severe impact the shut down would have had on our soldier’s lives, think again. The recession has not impacted the military like the rest of society but that doesn’t mean my troops are living flush. Many are living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. Bad financial decisions – like the $250 a month cell phone bill – or a car note for 24% interest mean that a half paycheck or worse, no paycheck would force dozens of soldiers from the edge of financial stability into dire straights. It wouldn’t matter if they received the backpay after Congress finally got its act together. In the day of already maxed out credit cards, they wouldn’t have any liquidity to be able to afford food.
Before you say it, yes, we’ve done budgeting classes. Yes, we’ve brought Financial Peace into the company and had certain soldiers attend the training designed to teach them about making sacrifices. But when you’re an E2 with two kids and a spouse who doesn’t work because the cost of daycare would eat up any benefit working might have, getting ahead of day to day life can seem damn near impossible.
Some of our soldiers haven’t made the best money choices. But many simply cannot afford to live by todays’ standards. Most are doing the very best they can because their security clearances depend on their financial responsibility. But if the government had shut down, then the thin edge between them and their financial doom would have disintegrated over night.
So the budget battle for me was not about abortion or NPR. For me, it was about forcing the government to make the same choices my soldiers would have had to make: the difference between wants and needs. At the end of this, I don’t know if Congress learned anything at all. At the end of this, I’m glad that our soldiers overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan didn’t have to lie awake at night and wonder how their loved ones back home were going to balance the check book come next payday.
And at the end of this all, I wish everyone would learn the differences between financial wants and needs. But I think I speak for every company commander out there when I say thank heavens Congress didn’t force our soldiers to learn that painful lesson in the middle of three wars.