President Donald Trump plans to give the Pentagon six months to develop a policy to ban transgender personnel from the military, despite pushback from current commanders and strong criticism from former generals and admirals.
Fairness and compassion, of course, should dictate that Trump drop this misguided policy change. But, if that isn’t enough, a new report says that removing transgender soldier and sailors will cost nearly $1 billion.
That’s a high price to pay for a cruel, politically motivated move that military leaders say is unnecessary and may even be harmful to their operations.
“After consultation with my Generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States Government will not accept or allow……Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming…..victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you,” Trump said in a series of tweets last month.
The generals, who work for the American people, not Trump, said they knew nothing of this directive, delivered via Twitter.
Still, Trump doubled down when asked about it by a reporter earlier this month. He was “doing the military a great favor” with the ban, he said.
Just hours later, Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said he would comply with an order from the secretary of defense and president, but that he thought “any patriot” should be allowed to serve.
“On a fundamental basis, any patriot that wants to serve and meets all the requirements should be able to serve in our military,” Spencer told reporters gathered at Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
Transgender men and women have honorably served in the military for more than a century and continue to do so. Estimates vary widely as to how many serve in the military.
A report from the Palm Center, an independent research institute with a focus on sexual minorities in the military, used a mid-range estimate of 12,800 to calculate that removing these service members from the military would cost about $960 million. The report was written by professors from the Naval Postgraduate School and one professor from San Diego State University.
For their cost estimate, they multiplied the number of active-duty transgender personnel by $75,000, the Pentagon’s cost for replacing a military member. This does not take into account the value of the skills and training lost when a soldier or sailor is kicked out of the military.
Trump said transgender people could no longer serve in the military because their medical costs were too high. A 2016 analysis for the Pentagon by the Rand Corporation calculated that fewer than 140 military personnel per year would seek gender-transition hormone treatments and even fewer would seek transition-related surgery. This would cost the military between $2.4 million and $8.4 million per year.
So, under Trump’s logic, the Pentagon would pay at least 100 times more than it would save by discharging transgender personnel. By comparison, the military spends 10 times that much on erectile dysfunction drugs each year.
This makes no sense, from a financial, or more important, humane, perspective.