BY craig konnoth
Last week, Senate Democrats failed to get the 60-vote majority they needed to move ahead with the repeal of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell law that forbids gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military.
In the debate preceding the vote, Republicans provided the usual criticisms of the lax spending of the Democratic administration.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell lamented that we now have “more spending, more debt,” Sens. Judd Gregg and John McCain commiserated with each other over the “unprecedented situation of debt and deficit,” while one of the Senate’s newest members, Scott Brown, made an impassioned plea to rein in the “out-of-control spending.”
Oddly enough, none of these fiscal hawks ““ and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell proponents ““ noted that their position on the deficit was inconsistent with their take on the sexual orientation law. It was Sens. Barbara Boxer, Susan Collins and Al Franken, all Don’t Ask Don’t Tell opponents, who focused on the law’s fiscal impact.
These senators pointed to a fact that most supporters of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, otherwise avid opponents of spending, refuse to acknowledge: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell costs are astronomical when measured not just in broken lives and ruined careers, but, less metaphorically, also in dollars and cents.
As a 2009 report released by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law explained, the military spends between $22,000 to $43,000 per person to replace the nearly 13,000 service members discharged under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and train their replacements. It concluded that the policy has cost the military between $290 million and more than half a billion dollars since its inception.
As Collins noted, these numbers do not include the administrative and legal costs of investigations and hearings, and the military schooling, such as pilot or linguistic training, of discharged members.
Most discharges occurred within two and a half years of the commencement of service ““ long before the government could begin to recoup their investment in the fired service member.
Add to that the costs that numerous ongoing military missions have incurred by the discharges of those with critical, difficult to replace skills, such as proficiency in Arabic. According to a 2005 General Accounting Office Report, 8 percent of the total number of the discharges between 1994 and 2003 had critical skills, such as training in a foreign language.
Moreover, the 2009 Williams Institute report notes that lifting Don’t Ask Don’t Tell restrictions would attract an additional 36,700 individuals to the military. This would not only reduce the need for recruitment efforts ““ and costs ““ but also help staff critical military missions.
This could greatly improve the overall functioning of the military during a time of increased personnel shortages and reduce the setbacks military missions may suffer because of personnel shortages.
Of course, the costs imposed by Don’t Ask Don’t Tell spill beyond the budgetary balance sheet; the policy also imposes enormous costs on LGBT people in the armed services.
As Air Force flight nurse Maj. Margaret Witt recounted at a recent trial on the constitutionality of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, she was forced to keep secrets from her colleagues throughout her career. When she was outed, she lost her job and benefits after 17 years of service as a result of the policy. On Friday, the U.S. District Court that heard her case found the policy unconstitutional.
Yet Witt is only one of the nearly 66,000 gay and lesbian individuals serving in the armed forces who live under the constant threat of dismissal, according to a 2010 Williams Institute estimate.
Moreover, the costs of the policy are increasingly borne by women and ethnic and racial minorities. As the 2010 Williams Institute report noted, women and other underrepresented groups each constitute one-third of the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell discharges, up from one-fourth in the late 1990s.
Supporters of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell do not see eye to eye with those who support the repeal of the law, such as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Gen. Colin Powell.
Yet even as proponents of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell call for greater government savings, they must acknowledge that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell imposes costs ““ upon the men and women who have loyally served their country, and upon every taxpaying American citizen.
Craig Konnoth is a research fellow at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law and a recent graduate of Yale Law School.