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

Hearing

Rep. Joe Wilson, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Military Personnel, made the following opening statement as prepared for delivery at a hearing on Military Personnel Overview.

Witness testimony can be found on the Committee Repository as prepared for delivery; the committee is no longer providing paper copies of witness testimony. Additionally, a live video feed of the hearing can be seen on the Committee website.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the hearing will come to order. Welcome to a meeting of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel. This subcommittee hearing will examine military personnel issues in the Armed Services including force drawdown plans, military health programs, military compensation programs, and other personnel policies and programs.

"Today the Subcommittee will turn its attention to the important issue of maintaining an all volunteer force that has experienced almost thirteen years of persistent conflict beginning with the attack on our country on September 11, 2001, by jihadists who have declared war on America. The military is now facing the largest drawdown and most draconian budget reductions since the end of the Cold War. The budgetary requirement for the Department of Defense to significantly reduce spending calls for a leaner and more adaptable force that impacts virtually all defense personnel activities.

"The President's budget significantly reduces ground and air forces end-strength and slows the growth of compensation and personnel benefits programs for all service members shifting spending to other programs. Our focus will include actions the services have taken to create efficiencies in personnel programs to include pay and compensation along with 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 at a time of unprecedented instability and threats to America from across the world.

"I am 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.

"The subcommittee's goal today is to better understand how the Department of Defense will balance the budgetary realities of today and the future with the readiness and morale and continued success of the all-volunteer force.

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