Statements of Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions - S. 2165
STATEMENTS OF INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
By Mr. REED (for himself, Mr. HAGEL, Mr. MCCAIN, Mr. AKAKA, Mr. NELSON of Florida, and Mrs. CLINTON):
S. 2165. A bill to specify the end strength for active duty personnel of the Army as of September 30, 2005; to the Committee on Armed Services.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. REED. Madam President, we are on a very important piece of legislation. We also, on a daily basis, are confronted with a very important situation internationally, and that is our continued struggle in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today Senator Hagel and I have announced legislation that would increase the end strength of the U.S. Army by 30,000 soldiers to meet these responsibilities worldwide.
This legislation will address a serious shortcoming in our Nation's defense policy, ensuring that we have sufficient forces to carry out all of our missions around the globe, in Iraq and in Afghanistan. This legislation would increase and authorize the end strength of the U.S. Army from its present total of 482,400, to a total of 512,400.
I am introducing this legislation today not only with Senator Hagel, but also with Senator McCain, Senator Akaka, Senator Bill Nelson, and Senator Clinton.
End strength is the number of personnel permitted to serve in the military. Retired GEN Gordon R. Sullivan once stated that the objective of end strength is:
To have enough soldiers to execute Army missions at the right time and the right place, have enough in the total to have both tactical and operational flexibility and to have adequate depth in numbers to support leader development, required force structure manning and the requisite balance needed across the ranks.
Each year in the Defense authorization bill, Congress authorizes the end strength of each branch of the military service, including the National Guard and Reserves.
The importance of the authorized end strength is that it is the number of soldiers the budget funds. On average, each soldier costs $329 a day or about $120,000 a year to fully house, pay, train, and equip.
Last October, when we were debating the emergency supplemental for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, Senator Hagel and I offered an amendment to increase the active-duty end strength of the Army by 10,000 soldiers and to pay for that increase out of the supplemental.
At that time, the administration vehemently opposed the amendment. The Pentagon argued that an increase was not necessary, that it was too expensive, and using funds from the supplemental would disrupt current plans to win the war in Iraq. The Army stated in its message, "Increasing end strength is a last resort to fix the challenge" of balancing forces properly to win the war in Iraq and the global war on terrorism.
Yet on January 28 of this year, a mere 3 months later, Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker announced he had received emergency authority to add 30,000 soldiers over the next 4 years to help "rebalance the force." Moreover, the Army would pay for these additional troops with funds from the fiscal year 2004 supplemental.
Needless to say, I am happy the Department of Defense has adopted the position Senator Hagel and I had last October. Indeed, they have raised our request of 10,000 up to 30,000. But it is one thing to have the soldiers-it is an important thing-but, unfortunately, the Department of Defense is using the supplemental process to avoid putting these troops in the budget, and I think that is the appropriate way to pay for it.
Our Army is the finest fighting force in the world, but it is in danger of being overextended and, in the process of that overextension, degraded in its quality and its effectiveness.
Despite the heroic efforts of soldiers every day-men and women-who sacrifice themselves for our benefit, without the assistance, the resources, the support they need, they will find it more and more difficult to do the job.
In January 2004, the National Journal summed up the serious situation facing our Army:
The occupation of Iraq, the largest single deployment since the Vietnam war, is lasting longer than expected, and comes on top of major deployments elsewhere around the globe. Tens of thousands of reservists have been sent away on lengthy tours that they never expected. Emergency "stop loss" orders have prevented soldiers from leaving the services once their enlistments are up. . . . [and] demoralized families are demanding relief.
The legislation we propose will address the major portion of that relief. On January 21 of this year, LT GEN John Riggs, the director of the Objective Force Task Force, or the Army of the future, told the Baltimore Sun:
You probably are looking at substantially more than 10,000-
Meaning 10,000 personnel.
I have been in the Army 39 years, and I've never seen the Army as stretched in that 39 years as I have today. . . .It's not my intent to be provocative but to be intellectually honest with my feelings on the strategy and commitment of the Army.
It is not Senator Hagel's and my intent to be provocative but to be intellectually honest.
In a November 23, 2003, article in the Wall Street Journal, retired GEN Barry McCaffrey stated:
The U.S. Army is stretched to the breaking point. We do not need more U.S. troops in Iraq. We do need to increase active-duty strength of the U.S. Army in order to sustain the current effort in both Iraq and Afghanistan-while remaining prepared to counter North Korea. Many of us are concerned that we won't be able to carry out the strategy we've embarked on in Iraq because we won't be able to sustain it. Next summer, we could be saying that we're breaking the U.S. Army, and that we can't do a third rotation.
I would disagree with General McCaffrey on the need for additional troops in Iraq. This week's experience of almost 200 civilian casualties and suicide attacks on Shi'a pilgrims suggests there is perhaps a need for more U.S. security, as well as better Iraqi security.
The major point he makes is the point we are making: We have to increase the overall size of the Army if we want to carry out the strategy we embarked upon.
Jeffrey Record of the Army's Strategic Studies Institute stated in a report published in December of 2003 that the "groundforce requirements in Iraq have forced the U.S. Army to the breaking point." He goes on to say that:
The Army appeared incapable of sustaining a commitment of 16 of its 33 active-duty combat brigades in Iraq absent a reduction in commitments elsewhere or an expansion of its force structure.
Since 1989, the Army's military end strength has been cut by more than 34 percent and civilian end strength by more than 45 percent while undergoing a 300-percent increase in mission rate. Their force structure is going down both in terms of military and civilian personnel, but their operations tempo has increased dramatically, and they are being stretched and stretched to the breaking point.
Today the Army presently has 492,242 soldiers serving on active duty. This has been the average rate for the past few weeks. This means that on the average, the Army needs 8,000 more soldiers each day to accomplish its mission than Congress has authorized and budgeted for.
We already know there is a shortfall in troops, and unless we adopt increases as we have proposed, this shortfall will
become a huge chasm between the missions and capabilities to carry out those missions.
The situation in Iraq remains uncertain, but what is certain is the Army is already planning to have a force of slightly more than 100,000 troops in Iraq through 2006. This is not just a quick spike, a month or two that you can carry out through some emergency funding mechanisms, something temporary; this is several years. Indeed, I would suggest many years to complete the missions.
In order to address the stresses caused by Iraq, the Army is intent on rebalancing its force, or transforming it. The transformation is what General Schoomaker says requires the additional forces.
The Army is caught in a very difficult situation. They have to modernize and transform themselves into a more agile, more technologically sophisticated units, but still they have responsibilities of nation building in Iraq and Afghanistan. Those responsibilities are not amenable to high-tech solutions. They require the old-fashioned solutions: troops on the ground, troops talking to civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan, gathering intelligence, analyzing intelligence and having the force, both the perception of that force and the reality of that force, to ensure our adversaries are in check.
I am glad that today the Department of Defense now agrees with the proposal that was offered last fall by Senator Hagel and myself and 51 of our colleagues who supported us that the Army needs more soldiers. What we disagree on is the way in which we should pay for these forces.
As I stated previously, every U.S. soldier costs the taxpayers approximately $120,000 per year. Therefore, an additional 30,000 troops would cost approximately $3.6 billion annually. There are two possible ways to authorize and fund an increase in end strength with its accompanying costs. One way is to put the end strength increase in the budget, raise the authorization levels in the Defense authorization bill, and find the funds in the $401 billion Defense budget to pay for the troops. That is a method used in the bill we are introducing today.
The Defense Department, however, has chosen a different route. It intends to increase end strength by using the emergency authority granted under 10 U.S. Code section 123a which waives the end strength restrictions for a fiscal year if there is a war or national emergency.
When this authority is used, the $3.6 billion cost of additional 30,000 troops is paid through supplemental or deficit funding.
This year, the extra troops will be paid for out of the fiscal year 2004 supplemental, but that supplemental will be depleted on September 30, 2004, if not earlier. So by my calculation, on October 1, 2004, there will be no funding and those 30,000 additional soldiers, or a significant portion of those troops, will still be in the field as they are recruited, trained, and deployed. That means the Defense Department will have to quickly request the Congress to provide another emergency funding for these troops, troops they know full well will be in the service or be recruited to the service or trained for the service by September 30, 2004.
Moreover, if the Pentagon persists in using this waiver, then they will repeat the scenario year after year. Pretend these troops do not exist when they send the regular budget up and then suddenly come to us with a supplemental at a convenient time and ask for additional money. That is not a way to budget for our forces.
I also point out that I am very concerned because I am hearing reports that the budget sent to us by the Budget Committee will include cuts to the overall defense line. How can the defense line overall be cut at the same time our military leaders are saying they need more troops?
There are those who are talking about the situation of abandoning Iraq. That is absolutely foolish. We are committed. Not only do we have to stay, we have to win. The only way to do that, in my view, is to maintain and provide the real resources for the troops to do their job. It is ironic to me, to say the least, that we would be contemplating a budget that cuts defense spending right now when we literally have so many unmet defense needs directly associated with Iraq and Afghanistan.
There is another problem with this supplemental approach. First, the definition of what is an emergency, the fiscal year 2000 budget resolution states that emergency funding must meet the following criteria: necessity; second, sudden, quickly coming into being, and not building up over time; third, urgent; four, unforeseen, unpredictable, and unanticipated; and five, temporary in nature.
These troops will not be temporary. The need is for several years. Certainly we know already what is coming before us. So this is not something quickly coming into being, something that is being built up suddenly.
The cost of 30,000 additional troops is now predictable and anticipated for at least the next 4 years. It does not qualify as an emergency. This device is simply hiding the true cost of ongoing operations and transformation.
As I said before, there are some who say this is a spike. It is not a spike. It is a plateau, or at least an ascending hill and a very slow decline.
This chart was presented to the Armed Services Committee staff by the Army on February 12, 2004. It shows the transformation plan. It shows the increase in the present end strength of 482,400 up to an end strength of roughly 512,400, from about 33 brigades to about 48 brigades. Then it shows the gradual decline.
I note this decline gets us back to current end strength around fiscal year 2010 or 2011. That is 7 years from now. That is not a spike. That is a tough hike up a steep hill and then a slow decline from that hill.
Also, this scenario assumes there are no other major contingencies such as North Korea; that there can be a successful transfer of military duties to more civilians; that we can reduce the time our soldiers are in training, in transit, in hospitals, and other nondeployed or nondeployable categories. These are all assumptions that might not be met.
The most prudent action today is to increase the forces that we suggest in our legislation. It is much easier to bring a force down than to build it up. When it is brought down, it saves money. When it is brought down, stop-loss orders do not have to be relied upon. These are orders which basically tell soldiers they have reached their enlistment termination date but we are not letting them go. They are no longer a volunteer, in some respects. They are with us until we tell them they can go. So that is something of which we have to be very conscious.
We have to also be concerned that these 30,000 troops might not come online at one moment. Obviously, it takes time to recruit and train. The Army may not need or be able to handle all of these troops. That does not argue against authorizing this increased end strength. What it does is argue for flexibility in the way the Army brings the troops on, and that is something I am sure we can talk about in the conduct of our discussions this year on the defense authorization legislation.
We have a point now where our Army is stretched. It is under tremendous stress, and to a degree this also applies to the Marine Corps, our land forces. We can do the responsible thing, which is to stand up and in the clear light of day increase the end strength of our military forces and pay for that end strength, or we can employ budgetary gimmicks.
We can avoid the reality. Through smoke and mirrors we can try to somehow persuade ourselves and maybe the American public that we do not have to pay for these operations in Iraq or Afghanistan. That would be wrong in terms of our responsibility to the American public and our responsibility, just as importantly, to the troops who are in the field. They have to know we are not playing budget games with our military forces. They have to know we support them, that we just cannot talk about a generational struggle against terrorism if we have to fund that struggle.
We also have to be particularly cognizant that so many of our National Guard and Reserve forces are engaged in this conflict. Of the 100,000-plus troops who will be in Iraq in the next several weeks after this rotation, 40 percent will be Reserve and National Guard forces, the largest deployment of Reserve and National Guard forces since World War II in a combat area of operations.
What is the message we are sending to them? If we do not increase the size of our Active Forces, the message is simple:
When you serve well-and they are-and honorably, and you return home, do not unpack your bags because you are going
back before you know it.
We just do not have the Active Forces to carry out the missions.
I hope in the process of our deliberations on the Defense authorization bill we can include the Hagel-Reed amendment. I thank my colleagues who supported this amendment. Certainly, I think we want to do all we can for our forces in the field.
I yield the floor.