Our spouses are an amazing and essential piece of our all-volunteer force!  

While our uniformed services recruit individuals, retention and long-term stability is a family business with the sacrifices and selfless efforts of spouses playing the central role. Today’s military spouses juggle supporting their servicemember with raising and educating children, arranging child care, keeping the family together during long deployments and separations, and volunteering to help other families, all while typically managing their own military or civilian careers.  

They endure and often execute permanent change-of-stations on their own, moving households, getting kids in and out of new schools, and creating family normalcy and stability out of what just isn’t a normal life. Sacrifice is inherent and accepted in uniformed service, and nobody in our families sacrifice more in the name of freedom than our spouses. 

My own spouse, Garrety, put her career on hold and had to leave jobs on multiple occasions including not being able to work for four and half years while we were stationed in Europe. I will work for the rest of my lifetime to make up for the sacrifices she made for me and my career, and I won’t come close to repaying her. 

Lt. Gen. Brian T. Kelly and wife Garrety with the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds in the background at the Milwaukee Air and Sea Show in 2019. Garrety participated in family and spouse programming during the event and Lt. Gen. Kelly conducted an enlistment ceremony for 40 new recruits. (Courtesy photo).

Our spouses are force multipliers, and we at MOAA appreciate them and everything they do to support the all-volunteer force and keep our nation free.   

In recognition of our appreciation and underscoring the essential role played by our spouses – in all our uniformed services – MOAA has and will continue to support legislation that helps reduce and ease the burdens our families face. Our current efforts include: 

• A new type of aid: MOAA has advocated for The Military Spouse Hiring Act, bipartisan legislation which would provide tax relief for employers as encouragement to hire military spouses. This approach would supplement other existing support programs, such as DoD scholarships and licensure support. 
  
  
• Better BAH: Military families on the move, especially in higher cost-of-living areas, deserve a Basic Allowance for Housing that covers 100% of their anticipated housing Anything less increases the economic strain faced by these servicemembers and their spouses, many of whom must take a step back on the corporate ladder after each move. I was proud to join more than 170 MOAA members on Capitol Hill last month for our annual Advocacy in Action event, which included BAH reform as a key issue. 
  
  
• Improved child care programs: Child care cost and availability remains a key concern for military spouses seeking to join or rejoin the workforce. The work of MOAA and advocacy partners has resulted in regular legislative improvements as part of the annual National Defense Authorization Act; the FY 2023 version included expanded assistance for child development centers, a program designed to increase in-home child care availability, and reimbursement for PCS-related child care. 

(All members can help keep these issues and others critical to MOAA at the top of their lawmakers’ agendas by logging onto MOAA’s Legislative Action Center. The more advocates we have, the louder our voice in the halls of Congress.) 

One of my top priorities at MOAA has been to underscore our organization’s commitment to the wider uniformed services community – not just members, and not just officers. Our work on behalf of military spouses exemplifies this commitment, and it’s work I look forward to championing through the 118th Congress and beyond.