It would be difficult to identify a greater contrast between the parties than the choices we have this year. While the GOP candidate offers nothing but sloganeering and often vile quips (including his disdain for American service members held as prisoners of war), Hillary Clinton has put forward a detailed 23-point plan to improve the lives of military families.
As commander-in-chief, Hillary Clinton will mandate more flexibility in service members’ family leave time, increased access to military child care, and more consideration of families' preferences and needs in duty assignments, according to a policy paper being released by her campaign Monday.
Her 23-point “Military Families Agenda” is unusual in its specificity about policies aimed at not just service members but their dependents, a topic that typically gets only passing mention at the national presidential campaign level. Clinton's campaign provided Military Times with an advance copy of the document.
As a senator, Clinton co-authored bills to improve healthcare benefits for National Guard members and reservists, as well as to improve benefits for military families. The new set of proposals goes beyond the usual list of high-level ideas and bullet points offered by campaigns. The rule changes would improve the ability of service members to take time off to deal with problems at home, provide additional mental health care to both returning veterans and their families, and give service members and their families more say in the location and length of assignments.
… Clinton, the former secretary of State and frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, spells out in the document that supporting military families “helps our nation attract and retain the most talented service members” and is “vital to the strength of our military and the health of our nation.”