Only one per household

You can call it a marriage penalty, or say it hits women disproportionately, but the bottom line on getting two military housing allowances for married or cohabitating service members is that taxpayers are paying twice for the same house.

And we don’t quite get the Obama administration’s math on how women suffer more from the formula just because 48 percent of military women are living with military men when just 7 percent of military men have significant others in the service. Our math shows all service members married to another service member suffer equally.

In our view, the debate should be on how to be fair about ending the windfall. We made a promise to our service members to provide them a housing allowance, and we didn’t set the basic rule any sweepstakes would impose — one per household. So they expect the allowance and were essentially promised it, regardless of marital status.

So pick a date, and any new service members or members married after that date get one allowance per household.

That’s fair to our service members and to taxpayers.

This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 2:00 PM with the headline "Only one per household."