Hearing of the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Military Personnel Overview

Statement

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, released the following opening statement for today's hearing to receive an overview of the Department of Defense's military personnel policies and actions:

"Today the Subcommittee will turn its attention to the important issue of maintaining an all volunteer force that is not only faced with continuing to fight, even after ten years of war, but also is now in a period of fiscal constraints and manpower reductions. The Department of Defense has completed an efficiency review which will result in $100 billion being reinvested into the services over the next five years. The Department is also facing an additional $78 billion cut over five years to its top line with proposed cuts by the department to a variety of programs to include end strength reductions for the Army and Marine Corps in 2015 and 2016.

"Today's hearing will focus on actions the services have taken to create efficiencies in personnel programs to include pay and compensation and the policies and programs that still need to be examined to successfully continue down a path of fiscal responsibility without undermining the readiness of the all volunteer force. We will also examine how the proposed reduction of end strength for the Army and Marine Corps will impact individual dwell time in light of unknown force requirements in the future.

"We are also concerned about the manpower reductions that all services will undertake and how they will employ voluntary and involuntary separation measures to achieve those reductions and how they will reduce the non-deployable populations in their services."

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