National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2005
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005-CONTINUED
AMENDMENT NO. 3450 TO AMENDMENT NO. 3352
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I ask for regular order for No. 3352.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. That amendment is now pending.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, I understand that Senator Warner has a second-degree amendment which I will accept.
Mr. WARNER. That is correct, and I seek now to modify it, and I will send a modification to the desk and add to the modified amendment.
It is a very minor modification. I simply strike one word, and it is the word "the." I send the modification to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The amendment is so modified.
The amendment (No. 3450), as modified, is as follows:
(Purpose: To provide for funding the increased number of Army active-duty personnel out of fiscal year 2005 supplemental funding)
Strike line 2 and insert the following:
"502,400, subject to the condition that costs of active duty personnel of the Army in excess of 482,400 shall be paid out of funds authorized to be appropriated for fiscal year 2005 for a contingent emergency reserve fund or as an emergency supplemental appropriation".
Mr. WARNER. I am ready to indicate to my colleague we have worked on this amendment in the second degree. It is my understanding that the Senator from Rhode Island is prepared to take the Warner amendment as modified.
Mr. REED. That is correct.
Mr. WARNER. Fine.
Mr. REED. I want to thank the chairman for his instructive work on this amendment. He recognizes, as I recognize, along with my colleagues and principal cosponsors Senators HAGEL, MCCAIN, CORZINE, AKAKA, and BIDEN, that our Army is stretched very thin across the globe with numerous missions, and in order to fulfill these missions we have to raise the end strength of the Army.
The amendment before us today would put within the authorized end strength a 20,000 increase in the number of soldiers in the U.S. Army. These are the number of troops the Army has indicated that they can absorb this year, and that they can train and utilize this year. It represents the recognition that we cannot simply depend upon emergency powers through supplementals to increase the end strength of the Army. We have to, as we do in this amendment, put in the actual end strength number to reflect a larger Army and also to reflect the fact that this is not a temporary occurrence.
Our commitments in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the globe are going to require a substantially larger Army for an indefinite period of time.
As a result, working together with the chairman, we have placed in the Defense authorization bill the precise number of soldiers, this precise increase of 20,000 troops.
What the chairman has added, though, is the fact that these troops have to be paid for. There is a strong argument that we should pay for them in terms of regular budget authority, but he has suggested that we again go the emergency supplemental route to pay for these troops, which are now fully authorized in law. What I wanted to accomplish in the amendment first is to make sure we do incorporate a suitable end strength number. That has been accomplished.
Second, I wanted to avoid a situation where the Army had to go within its existing programs to search high and low for dollars to pay for these extra troops. That has been accomplished by the chairman's suggestion that we move some funds already identified in the emergency supplemental and designate those to pay for these additional troops.
So we have avoided a situation where the Army this year is going to be forced to come up with funds by going through and ransacking their existing programs, and we have set it in the authorization bill, the appropriate forum for such a decision. We have set in the precise number of end strength that is appropriate this year for the U.S. Army.
The question still arises, What happens in succeeding years? The argument myself, Senator McCain, Senator Hagel, and others have made is we cannot continue to depend upon supplemental and emergency funding. This is not an emergency. This is a fact of life in the world today. We need a larger Army.
We are accomplishing our objectives today for this fiscal year in this authorization, but I think the chairman and we all recognize we will eventually confront a situation where we have to raise the bottom line of the Army in terms of the funds they have. We do not want to see a situation a year from now or 2 years from now when the supplementals are inadequate but the needs of these troops are still persistent.
Senator Levin has language in this authorization bill that indicates in succeeding years, after this fiscal year and after this authorization bill, any increase in end strength will have to be put in the Army budget. I think that is an appropriate response. I think the Reed amendment as modified by Senator Warner will, in effect, accomplish that.
This is the thrust of the amendment. I have had an opportunity to explain it. At this point I reserve the remainder of my time to allow the Senator from Virginia to comment.
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Mr. REED. Mr. President, I yield such time as remained.
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Mr. REED. I thank the chairman for his constructive participation in this process and also to emphasize what he has emphasized and that is the extraordinary stress our Army is withstanding at this point. They are doing it magnificently, performing with great skill and professionalism.
We have 126,000 soldiers in Iraq; we have 13,000 soldiers in Afghanistan; we have soldiers still in the Balkans, 2,500; we have forces in Kuwait, about 17,000; we still have our mission in the Sinai; we have 1,700 soldiers in Guantanamo maintaining the detention facilities there; we have 16,000 soldiers, Noble Eagle, which is the heart of our defense of our homeland; we have soldiers in the Philippines; 31,600 soldiers in South Korea. We have them all over the world doing an extraordinary task and job for our company. Frankly, they need more help and that is the heart of the Reed amendment.
In addition to that, we have seen troubling signs that this operational tempo is putting great stress and duress on our soldiers. Recently, there was a stop-loss order announced by the G-1 of the U.S. Army that said essentially any soldier who is scheduled to depart within 90 days for deployment cannot leave the service, even if that soldier's time in service has expired. Essentially what they have said is: You can't get out of the service. The Volunteer Army is no longer completely volunteer. That is just one example.
We are withdrawing troops from Korea at a time when there is a huge crisis on the peninsula. The North Koreans indicated they have plutonium; they are intending to process it. They may have already constructed eight nuclear devices. We don't know for sure. Yet at this time when we need maximum military force to complement our diplomacy, we are withdrawing troops, which is perhaps sending a signal to the North Koreans that they can wait us out or that we are not able or ready to match our diplomacy appropriately with military force.
That is another prime example, I believe. In fact, frankly, I think that if North Korea 2 or 3 years ago brazenly declared they had nuclear weapons, our response would not have been to withdraw troops. The calls in this Chamber would have been for more troops in Korea. But now because of Iraq that is difficult; we are pulling them out to send them to Iraq.
Then we have a situation in our training centers, the infrastructure of the Army. This is one of the major reasons why we have such extraordinarily skilled soldiers.
First, they are men and women of courage and character, but second they received the greatest, most realistic training in the world. They are individuals who can and will do any job, but they do that so well because they are the best trained.
We are taking soldiers from our training centers-those trainers who are preparing the troops to go overseas-and we are deploying them.
As a result, these are indications that we have a military force which is significantly stretched. That is why it is so important to raise the number of troops that we have entering the Army.
Today, the Army has 495,374 soldiers serving on active duty. The end strength has to increase. The Reed amendment increases it by 20,000 troops.
There are those who have predicted we would get in this predicament. General Shalikashvili's predictions and other predictions are coming true. Our responsibility is now to give the military, particularly the Army, sufficient resources and sufficient personnel to do the job which we are asking them to do.
Last December, in 2003, the Army's Strategic Studies Institute published a report which stated that the ground force requirements in Iraq have forced the U.S. Army to the breaking point.
We have to prevent that breaking point from being reached, and that means putting more troops into the force structure.
Last year, during the appropriations debate, Senator Hagel and I sponsored an amendment that would have raised the end strength by 10,000 in the supplemental appropriations. It passed the Senate. I thank my colleagues on both sides who were very supportive of that. But, unfortunately, at that point the administration thought it was unnecessary and they were able to successfully defeat that proposal in conference. At least now they recognize the need for additional troops. But what they are still adhering to is this notion that the emergency is temporary.
I hope by putting the actual number of the end strength increase in this bill we are sending a signal to everyone that we will, in fact, stay the course-not just rhetorically but with actual resources and actual troops.
Senator Warner explained the funding mechanism was one where some of us would have preferred, frankly, if we could have, to increase just the bottom line of the Army. But given these other demands on resources and this authorization bill, it was his suggestion that we, once again, use emergency funding to fund this now authorized end strength. That gets us through this year. But the concern I have and the concern others have is that we will reach a point within a year or two where the Army is going to have these troops in uniform but their baseline is not going to be sufficient if a supplemental or emergency funding is not made readily available. That is a real crisis and we have to start thinking about that now.
Senator Levin has been very thoughtful on this topic. He has language in the bill that says any increases in the next fiscal year of the end strength have to be budgeted through regular budget processes. Again, I hope that takes place. But that means giving more resources to our Army, and we will work-I think I can speak for Senator Warner-to make sure the Army has those resources.
I am very pleased we are able to make this adjustment-overdue adjustment-in the end strength of the U.S. Army.
I retain the remainder of my time, and I yield the floor.
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Mr. REED. I thank the Senator from Alabama for his kind words also.
We are all in agreement that there is tremendous stress on our Army. Let me suggest this chart shows the deployments in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom projected not just over the next several months but actually into 2007. The dark green demonstrates the actual planned deployment today, the projection of February 2004. On July 19, 2003, last year, these are the force projected, brigades equivalents.
It was projected for July of 2004 we would be roughly at about 8 brigade equivalents. Today in Iraq and Afghanistan there are 18 brigades, more than twice as many soldiers, or about 130,000-plus soldiers in these two operations.
This is not just a spike. This is, as you can see on the chart, a plateau. We are expected, under the projections today, to have 17 brigades all the way out to the end of 2005, the beginning of January of 2006. They come down a little bit if things stabilize a bit in March of 2006, to around 13 or 14 brigades.
This is a long way out to project. So far, if we look at the projections, we have ended up with more troops needed than what we thought we could entertain.
My point is that this is not a temporary spike in requirements for soldiers in the U.S. Army. This stretches out to 2007, 3 years from now. It is entirely appropriate we put this number into the Defense bill, that we do not simply give some emergency powers to the Secretary of Defense.
The challenge we have going forward-we have met the challenge this year by tapping into that emergency fund, but the challenge going forward is giving the Army the resources in succeeding budgets in their own bottom line so they can continue to field these forces. That is what we are projecting today. It is not as if in 6 months we will be fine, Iraq will be resolved, Afghanistan will be resolved, we will be back to a low level of participation.
Our planners' best thoughts today are for 17 brigades for a long time. So that is what is at the heart of the amendment I have proposed, along with Senator McCain, Senator Hagel, Senator Corzine, Senator Akaka, and Senator Biden. I believe we are taking a very important step by putting the end strength number in our authorization bill, not as an emergency but as a reality, as a near- and medium-term reality. That is what this chart says. Three years from now we are going to have to still find troops to put in about 14 or 15 brigades in these 2 operations.
But the issue that is still outstanding-not this year because we have bridged it with the emergency funding-is, how do we build up the resources within the Army budget to carry these soldiers forward 2 and 3 years hence? We will be working on that, obviously, over the next few weeks into conference and beyond.
I know there are other colleagues-Senator McCain, Senator Hagel, and others-who might want to talk. We have made arrangements prior to the vote for 10 minutes, which I would gladly offer to them for their comments.
Mr. President, may I inquire how much time I have?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has 4 minutes 38 seconds.
Mr. REED. Thank you, Mr. President. I reserve the remainder of my time and yield the floor.
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Mr. REED. If the Senator will yield, I believe we were waiting for Senator Hagel, another cosponsor.
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Mr. REED. I announce that the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. KERRY) is necessarily absent.