SPEAKERS CONTENTS INSERTS
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98–059
2005
[H.A.S.C. No. 108–25]
HEARING
ON
NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT
FOR FISCAL YEAR 2005—H.R. 4200
AND
OVERSIGHT OF PREVIOUSLY AUTHORIZED PROGRAMS
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE HEARINGS
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ON
TITLE IV—MILITARY PERSONNEL AUTHORIZATIONS
TITLE V—MILITARY PERSONNEL POLICY
TITLE VI—COMPENSATION AND OTHER PERSONNEL BENEFITS
TITLE VII—HEALTH CARE PROVISIONS
HEARING HELD
MARCH 24, 2004
TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York, Chairman
TOM COLE, Oklahoma
CANDICE MILLER, Michigan
PHIL GINGREY, Georgia
JIM SAXTON, New Jersey
JIM RYUN, Kansas
EDWARD SCHROCK, Virginia
ROBIN HAYES, North Carolina
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VIC SNYDER, Arkansas
MARTY MEEHAN, Massachusetts
LORETTA SANCHEZ, California
ELLEN O. TAUSCHER, California
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MADELEINE BORDALLO, Guam
Mike Higgins, Professional Staff Member
Lynn W. Henselman, Professional Staff Member
Elizabeth McAlpine, Staff Assistant
Jennifer Ruddock, Staff Assistant
C O N T E N T S
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF HEARINGS
2004
HEARING:
Wednesday, March 24, 2004, Fiscal Year 2005 National Defense Authorization Act—Budget Request on Military Personnel Policy, Benefits and Compensation Overview
APPENDIX:
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 24, 2004
FISCAL YEAR 2005 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BUDGET REQUEST ON MILITARY PERSONNEL POLICY, BENEFITS AND COMPENSATION OVERVIEW
STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
McHugh, Hon. John M., a Representative from New York, Chairman, Total Force Subcommittee
Snyder, Hon. Vic, a Representative from Arkansas, Ranking Member, Total Force Subcommittee
WITNESSES
Abell, Hon. Charles S., Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness
Barnes, Master Chief Joseph L., (Ret.) National Executive Secretary, Fleet Reserve Association
Brown, Lt. Gen. Richard E. ''Tex'', III, USAF, Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel
Hagenbeck, Lt. Gen. Franklin L., USA, Deputy Chief of Staff, G1
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Harting, Erin M., Deputy Director of Legislative Affairs, Enlisted Association of the National Guard of the United States
Hoewing, Vice Adm. Gerald, USN, Chief of Naval Personnel and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower and Personnel
Hosek, Dr. James, Senior Economist, Rand Corporation
Lange, Col. Lee F., USMC, Ret., Deputy Director, Government Relations, Military Officers Association of America
Parks, Lt. Gen. Garry L., USMC, Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs
Stewart, Derek B., Director of Defense, Capabilities and Management, General Accounting Office
Thie, Dr. Harry J., Senior Management Scientist, Rand Corporation
APPENDIX
PREPARED STATEMENTS:
[The Prepared Statements can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Abell, Hon. Charles S.
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Barnes, Master Chief Joseph L., (Ret.)I6000
Brown, Lt. Gen. Richard E.
Hagenbeck, Lt. Gen. Franklin L.
Hoewing, Vice Adm. Gerald L.
Hosek, Dr. James
Lokovic, Commanding Sgt. James E., Deputy Executive Director and Director, Military and Government Relations Air Force Sergeants Association
McHugh, Hon. John M.
Parks, Lt. Gen. Garry L.
Snyder, Hon. Vic
Stewart, Derek B.
The Statement of the Military Coalition presented by Master Chief, Joseph L. Barnes, USN, (Ret.), joint with Erin M. Harting, Co-Chairman, Guard and Reserve Committee and Col. Lee Lange, Co-Chairman, Survivors Committee, USMC, (Ret.)
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Thie, Dr. Harry J.
DOCUMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[There were no Documents submitted.]
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD:
[The Questions and Answers submitted can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Dr. Gingrey
Mr. McHugh
Ms. Sanchez
Ms. Tauscher
FISCAL YEAR 2005 NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT—BUDGET REQUEST ON MILITARY PERSONNEL POLICY, BENEFITS AND COMPENSATION OVERVIEW
House of Representatives,
Committee on Armed Services,
Total Force Subcommittee,
Washington, DC, Wednesday, March 24, 2004.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 1:04 p.m., in room 2212 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John McHugh (Chairman of the Subcommittee) presiding.
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OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN M. MCHUGH, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM NEW YORK, CHAIRMAN, TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE
Mr. MCHUGH. Let me call the Subcommittee to order, and to welcome you all, for this at the 958,227th we had this month, I think. But obviously, all of these topics are important, and we are very, very fortunate to have, as we have had in the past, panelists of great distinction, and we appreciate, as always, their insight, their expertise, and most of all, their ability and willingness to be here today.
And today, we are going to hear testimony concerning, really, a wide variety of military personnel programs and policies. This overview of the military personnel world ensures that the Subcommittee stays in touch with the bedrock issues, such as compensation and benefits, which are so vital to the welfare of service members and their families, and to a large extent, dictate whether they remain or they leave military service.
And two of the areas that help us gauge how we are doing on compensation and benefits are found in recruiting and retention, and by most reasonable measures, I think it would be stated that fiscal year 2003 was an—even an excellent year for recruiting and retention, and in some cases, you could say legitimately, a record breaking year. However, if this Subcommittee has learned anything, and certainly, if I have learned anything over the last 10 years, it is that the only thing you can count on in recruiting and retention is that there are cycles. They look natural, and if you hang around long enough, ultimately, the environment will change, and the trends will change.
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And as good as the environment may appear today, I personally worry that improvement in the job market and continued stress on the force will yield a hostile recruiting and retention environment in the near future. And the questions we face, therefore, are: are we prepared to recognize that we have a problem early in those cycles, and early in the next cycle; and are we, in turn, prepared to respond with the resources that will undoubtedly be necessary?
I am also concerned about how we are compensating our war fighters. We are at a crossroads on imminent danger pay and family separation allowance. Given that on December 31, 2004 expiration on increased levels for both of these programs is approaching, we need to decide how we are going to proceed on those issues in the future, and we also need to decide what role programs such as high deployment allowance should have during this period of extreme operations tempo.
This Subcommittee and the Congress as a whole are very concerned about how to best structure compensation and benefits for the reserve components. The Congress is acutely aware of the new era of high operations tempo (OPTEMPO) within the reserve forces, and the effect it is having both on the reservists and, of course, equally important, their families. And there is considerable pent-up energy, to put it in a positive way, pent-up energy in the Congress regarding reserve programs, and that has certainly led to a bumper crop of new ideas. And the challenge facing us on this side of the room will be, into the immediate future, how to best choose which of those programs will receive the benefit of what, unfortunately, still remain to be limited resources.
And certainly, in that regard, we will be looking for today's witnesses to help us understand and address those and, I am sure, other issues that the Subcommittee members, and indeed, the panelists themselves, may wish to bring up. As I said, we welcome our panelists here today. I note that, in addition to the written statements that we have for both panels, which I would move without objection to have entered into the record in their entirety, we also have, and I move that the Subcommittee accept, a written statement from the Air Force Sergeants Association which, without objection, will also be entered into the record. And with that, let me yield to my partner, and to the distinguished Ranking Member on the Subcommittee, and a leader on these issues, Dr. Snyder.
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[The prepared statement of Sergeant Lokovic can be viewed in the hard copy.]
[The prepared statement of Mr. McHugh can be viewed in the hard copy.]
STATEMENT OF HON. VIC SNYDER, A REPRESENTATIVE FROM ARKANSAS, RANKING MEMBER, TOTAL FORCE SUBCOMMITTEE
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And Mr. Chairman, I also have a prepared statement that I would like to have entered into the record.
Mr. MCHUGH. Without objection, so ordered.
Dr. SNYDER. And I won't read it, and as is often the case in this Committee, gentlemen, I don't disagree with anything that Mr. McHugh said in his statement, that you all have a big task with a lot of specific issues.
The one thing I would say is, you know, we are here to help you all do your job, and I would hope that if there are any things that didn't make it into your written statement, that you feel it would be helpful to this Committee, the Armed Services Committee, that are really your advocates, if anything that would be helpful for us to know about, and I hope you will mention it. If there are problems that we ought to know about it, that didn't make it into your written statement, or questions we need to be asking, or some legislation that perhaps we need to think about tinkering with, I hope you will also feel free to add that on during the course of this hearing today. I know that sometimes written statements can be a little bit different than this discussion that we have, so I hope you will let us know what problems and challenges you have out there, so that we can—we are—we want to help you, and help our men and women in uniform.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Snyder can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the gentleman. And let me—pardon me—let me move to the introduction of our first distinguished panel, all of them no strangers to this Subcommittee, most of them no strangers over the last couple of weeks, because most of them have been here in the recent past, and as I mentioned earlier, we deeply appreciate their continued willingness to join with us and help to sort through these very, very pressing issues.
First of all, let me introduce the Honorable Charles S. Abell, Principal Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and as I said before, no stranger to this Hill, somewhat of a stranger on this side of the House, but knows Congress well. Mr. Secretary, thanks for being here.
Lieutenant General Franklin Hagenbeck, United States Army, Deputy Chief of Staff, G1, Headquarters, Department of the Army. No stranger to this room, he was here not so long ago, or I should say to this Subcommittee, certainly no stranger to me when he was the Commanding General for the 10th Mountain Division, and as I mentioned at the earlier hearing, the last time I saw Buster, I think we were sharing a cigar at K2. So, it is good to see him in a somewhat more civilized environment. Somewhat more civilized environment.
Vice Admiral Gerald Hoewing, United States Navy, Chief of Naval Personnel and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Manpower and Personnel. And we will thank you so much, again, for being here, as you were not so long ago. And Lieutenant—or—skipped one. I don't want to do that.
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Lieutenant General Richard ''Tex'' Brown, Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, Headquarters, United States Air Force. General, good to see you again, as always, and thanks for being here again and your continued service, and Lieutenant General Garry L. Parks, Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, United States Marine Corps. General—I told the General, just a few moments ago, I have seen him, and his colleagues more recently, more often recently than I have my family.
I should note to you that—and that is not a very high standard, but I should also mention this will be the last opportunity, if his luck holds out, for General Parks to testify before this Subcommittee. I believe he will be retiring shortly. Is that right?
General PARKS. Yes, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. Can we talk you out of it?
General PARKS. I don't think so, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. I won't—out of respect for your service, I won't try to, then, but let me express, on behalf of the entire Congress, and indeed, the entire population of this great country, thank you so much for your service. You have done an outstanding job over many, many years, and we deeply appreciate that, and you go with our thanks and our best wishes for a prosperous future, as you have had such a successful past, in whatever endeavors you choose to pursue.
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General PARKS. Thank you, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, sir. And with that, let me go to Secretary Abell. Mr. Secretary, as I said, welcome. We have your written statement, and our attention is yours, sir.
STATEMENT OF HON. CHARLES S. ABELL, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY UNDER SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, PERSONNEL AND READINESS
Secretary ABELL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Dr. Snyder. Thank you for the opportunity to testify today on compensation and benefits and military personnel programs. I also want to thank this Subcommittee for exercising strong advocacy and support for—on these important benefits and programs.
To begin with this afternoon, I commend the brave men and women in uniform who are defending our nation at home and abroad, and the Department of Defense civilians and contractors who support them. As you know, Mr. Chairman, I recently returned from Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain, where I found great soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coastguardsmen performing their duties with professionalism and enthusiasm. I was heartened to see selfless activity throughout the theater, as units who have been serving in dangerous and austere conditions for a year are preparing to turn over to replacement units.
Everywhere we went, units are working hard to leave the bases and facilities better than they found them for the incoming units. All of these troops realized that they would not benefit from their hard work, but they were determined to make the quality of life for those that follow them better than that that they experienced. The selfless service, Mr. Chairman, of the members of our armed forces make me proud every day. I saw these military personnel on watch, on patrol, and enjoying bustling exchange outlets and MWR programs.
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Over the past year, I have visited many of the installations from which our troops deployed, where guard and reserve members mobilized, and where families anxiously await their return. In every location, I found the quality of life and community support programs that were responding to the special needs that accompany the global war on terror. There have been and will continue to be challenges to be met to support the frontlines as well as the home front.
At the same time, the compensation, benefit, personnel policies, and quality of life programs are positioning to change with transformation, with the global posture review, with Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) 2005, and with the global war on terror, and I am confident that we are up to that task.
The Department is committed to providing the best and most effective suite of compensation and benefits to our force. We are in a competitive business, in which we compete in recruiting the best and the brightest young men and women to serve. We also compete with private sector businesses to retain the highly qualified professional leaders that we develop during their service. We must provide our force competitive pay and benefits, good training, excellent, well-maintained equipment, and the personal attention to their family needs that they expect. The non-compensation benefits include world-class health care, commissary and exchange privileges, quality housing, and a safe place to work and relax. The Department is equally committed to the MWR programs, including child care and fitness programs. These form the military community support structure and contribute to mission readiness. Further, we recognize that many of our retirees rely on these same programs.
We thank you for your support for these programs, and for the emergency supplemental funds that have helped us with the personnel programs, family assistance, and morale programs related to the war effort.
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Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to address any questions that you may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Abell can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary, and I suspect we will have some questions, at the time. I am trying to get back to the order in which I introduced everybody.
Next, we have Lieutenant General Buster Hagenbeck, Franklin Hagenbeck, Deputy Chief of Staff. General.
General HAGENBECK. Thank you, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. Welcome.
General HAGENBECK. Thank you very much.
Mr. MCHUGH. And we look forward to your comments, sir.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. FRANKLIN L. HAGENBECK, USA, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF, G1
General HAGENBECK. Congressman McHugh and Dr. Snyder and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on behalf of America's Army. The centerpiece of what we do as an army is our soldiers. For these brave men and women, I want to express my sincere gratitude for your continued and committed support. As I speak to you today, the Army has embarked upon the largest movement of troops in our history. We are nearing completion of more than 250,000 soldiers moving in and out of the Iraqi theater, and what will remain constant, however, is more than 300,000 soldiers will continue to be deployed to more than 120 countries in the near future. We are fully engaged across the full spectrum of the globe and we remain committed to fighting and winning the war on terrorism.
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To continue this war, we must recruit and maintain a quality force, soldiers who have a warrior ethos ingrained in their character. Last year, the active and reserve met their recruiting goals, and the National Guard met their end strength. Recruiting incentives such as the Enlistment Bonus Program, the Army College Fund Program, Loan Repayment Program, and the National Call to Service, have successfully enabled the Army to execute precision in recruiting. Also in the previous year, the Army achieved all retention goals, a result that can be directly attributed to the Army's Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program.
We anticipate retention increasing this month and in April, as Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom units transition and soldiers take advantage of the present duty assignment Selective Reenlistment Bonus in theater. In recent years, Congress has supported compensation and much-needed entitlement programs. Congressionally mandated increases and imminent danger pay, family separation pay, and targeted pay raises are the foundation of soldier well-being. With your support, we have undertaken a number of initiatives to provide special compensation for our soldiers who serve their country under hazardous conditions.
And finally, as you know, the Army is transforming through its rebalancing, stabilization, and conversion, with the goal of temporarily increasing end strength by 30,000 soldiers. Although we have been very successful in the last few years in recruiting and maintaining quality soldiers, to achieve the required temporary increase, the Army will continue to need broad incentive packages to shape the force.
Our country continues to face unparalleled challenge at this time in our Army, our sons and daughters, have an unwavering commitment to meet that challenge. I am proud of our soldiers and their selfless service, and we will continue to need your support as we focus on the protracted global war on terrorism while fulfilling the manpower needs of the Army.
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Once again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today, and I look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Hagenbeck can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, General. Next, Vice Admiral Gerald Hoewing. Admiral, there are you.
Admiral HOEWING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF VICE ADM. GERALD HOEWING, USN, CHIEF OF NAVAL PERSONNEL AND DEPUTY CHIEF OF NAVAL OPERATIONS FOR MANPOWER AND PERSONNEL
Admiral HOEWING. Dr. Snyder and distinguished members of the Subcommittee, thanks for the opportunity to be here today.
When I was here a couple weeks ago, I talked about the unprecedented success that the Navy has had in our manpower and personnel readiness programs. I told you that our retention was at record level of highs, our attrition was at all time lows, and that we continually strive to recruit the best and the brightest that the Nation has to offer.
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Our sailors are proud to serve their country in this time of war, and we are certainly proud of them. We are doing everything we can to reward that service and sacrifice, through innovative growth and development programs, through meaningful work, and maintaining a high quality of service for our sailors.
I would be remiss if I didn't also recognize the significant role that you all have played in securing this level of readiness through your support of the many very important compensation and benefit incentives. Everything from pay raises to housing allowance increases to targeted skill incentives you have allowed us to pursue over the last several years, have made a huge difference in our ability to recruit and retain the best that our nation has, and to take care of their families.
But these financial benefits and incentives have done much more than just improve retention and quality of life; they have been critical tools in our effort to shape the force around our troop requirement need. Take the Assignment Incentive Pay pilot program that you authorized last year. Because of these innovative, out of the box, market-based incentive program, our Navy has been able to attract hundreds of sailors into those types of jobs where we need them the most in order to meet our readiness requirements.
Aviation Continuation Pay, Nuclear Officer Incentive Pays, and other incentives such as these have had enormous impact on our ability to keep those officers that are not only highly skilled and highly required within our service, but they are also very sought after out there in the civilian sector.
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We have refined the bonuses this year to improve manning, with very discrete skill sets. Using the force shaping tools, we have applied very narrowly in our recruiting efforts and our retention efforts, in order to make sure that we are retaining exactly those skill sets that we need, and I would say that those Selective Reenlistment Bonus (SRB) programs is probably our most effective, certainly our most effective program.
And in the future, as we shape the force even further, types of tools like these are going to be even more important. And we may need the requirement for additional force shaping authorities as we look forward to the future when some of those market-based challenges will continue to grow.
Again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the chance to be here, and thank you for the extraordinary support that you and the Committee have provided to our Navy and our Navy families, and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Hoewing can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, Admiral. I appreciate it, and I appreciate, as I have said, your service. Next, Lieutenant General Richard ''Tex'' Brown, Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel. General, thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. RICHARD ''TEX'' BROWN, USAF, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF FOR PERSONNEL
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General BROWN. Chairman McHugh, Dr. Snyder, and distinguished member of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you today.
In previous testimony, I had the opportunity to tell you about our great Air Force, and thank you for the tremendous support that you have given to our people. So, I will keep this short. Today, our Air Force is meeting the many challenges facing us, from our efforts to shape and develop the force, to addressing criminal behavior and the effects it has on morale, good order, and discipline, and esprit de corps.
Using the Air Expeditionary Force (AEF) construct as a framework, we continue to mold our force into one that responds faster, with greater flexibility, and more precision than any other in the world. This incredible team of men and women continues to work together to ensure our Air Force remains the greatest air force in the world, and again, we appreciate all this Committee and Congress have done to provide the opportunities to succeed.
I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Brown can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. MCHUGH. Well, you are a man of your word. That was short. Thank you, sir. Next, and the about to retire member of our distinguished panel, Deputy Commandant for Manpower and Reserve Affairs in the United States Marine Corps, Lieutenant General Garry Parks.
General Parks, thanks for being here, and in all sincerity, and at the risk of repeating myself, best wishes for a prosperous and happy future.
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STATEMENT OF LT. GEN. GARRY L. PARKS, USMC, DEPUTY COMMANDANT FOR MANPOWER AND RESERVE AFFAIRS
General PARKS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Congressman Snyder, distinguished members of the Subcommittee, it is my pleasure to again appear before you today, during which we will examine a wide range of policy, benefits, and compensation issues.
As a backdrop to this testimony, I affirm that the President's budget continues to raise the basic pay and reduce out of pocket expenses for our dedicated Marines and their patriotic families, and additionally, the President's budget provides valuable funding for our recruiting and retention programs, which as alluded to earlier, are foundational in today's challenging personnel environment.
I would just like to highlight a few relevant issues. Due to the hard work of our recruiters and our Marine leaders, the Corps is once again poised to exceed our recruiting and retention goals, on pace for a ninth consecutive year of achieving our recruiting mission. Concurrent with a contingent totaling some 1,400 Marines currently in Haiti, 25,000 plus Marines and sailors are recently deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom II.
Our reserve units and individual mobilization augmentees have rapidly integrated with our active force, demonstrating the effectiveness of our Marine Corps' total force team. In support of the global war on terrorism, the Corps has approximately 4,500 reserve unit Marines mobilized, and another 1,300 individual volunteers are filling important joint and internal billets.
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Our Marines are working hard. While they are stretched, they are doing what they trained to do. We are watching our recruiting and our retention numbers, and other key indicators more closely than I have ever seen in the past. To date, they remain strong. The Corps continues to consider ways to best utilize your Marines, and is reviewing our active and reserve component structure in order to rebalance the Marine Corps to meet future challenges.
As evident in recent testimony, interest concerning sexual assaults is high, and appropriately so. Eliminating sexual assault is a leadership issue, and one that Marine leaders will confront directly.
Finally, we are proud of our deployment support programs for our Marines and their families, especially our Marine Corps Community Services One Source Program, that we have been fortunate to pilot for the Department of Defense.
Again, the Marine Corps expresses its support to what this Subcommittee, and for that matter, the entire Congress does on behalf of our dedicated men and women and their wonderful families, and I look forward to answering your questions.
[The prepared statement of General Parks can be viewed in the hard copy.]
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you very much, General. Let me start off with—it is really a point of curiosity on my part, and I hope it can be answered relatively quickly by Secretary Abell. General Parks mentioned the effort to continue to increase the compensation levels for the men and women in uniform. That has been an objective, and it began, from my experience, back under Secretary Cohen and President Clinton, and it has continued, and that is a good thing.
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We have a multi-year program underway where we take CPI plus half a percent, and—trying to close that gap. But just as a point of reference, when the RAND Corporation did the ninth—I think it—Ninth Quadrennial Review of Military Compensation (QRMC), they determined that the target point for measuring the difference between civilian and military 70th percentile, and if you want to take that for the record, I am—it is kind of an inside baseball question.
But I am just curious, why 70 percentile?
Secretary ABELL. Well, Mr. Chairman, we discussed that a lot, as we reviewed the work of the Ninth QMRC, and it is not—there is not a lot of science there. What it is is a realization that the folks that we recruit, and those that we have, and want to retain, are a little—we are a little like Lake Wobegon. Everybody is above average, so we were trying to find what is a good place to be, and we settled on 70th percentile, and there is not a lot more science than that, except that we—as we looked at those cells that were at 70 or approaching 70, we could see the behaviors that we were looking for. We were attractive to those who weren't in, and we were attractive to those who were in to stay, and so, it is no more scientific than that.
Mr. MCHUGH. From your observation, it seems to work.
Secretary ABELL. Yes, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. Well, it is fair. I just was curious how it happened. Speaking of Lake Wobegon, my—everybody was above average, you are right. My dad always had a problem with averages. He said you know, John, if you have got two one-legged farmers walking their cow to market, on average everybody has got two legs. I worry about the recruiting and the retention statistics. I mentioned in my opening statement that by standard average measurements, we had a pretty successful year. By standard average measurements, some would argue statistically, with validity, that it was a record in some areas, a record year. And yet, as I said, I worry, we may have a quick shift in that environment.
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But I am wondering, to what extent, and I don't know as there is a quantifiable answer to this, but to what extent does stop loss affect that retention statistic? I think all of the services have some form, some as a unit, some are unit stop losses in the Army, others are broad-based job classification and such, but is it—are we being a little bit Pollyannaish to rely upon our statistics when we have a pretty broad-based stop loss program in place to gauge retention?
Secretary ABELL. Now, Mr. Chairman, I will start off, and then defer to my colleagues at the table.
First of all, I think you will find that they will willingly report that except for the Army, the other services have eliminated their stop loss, effectively eliminated their stop loss, perhaps even processed the last of those who were under stop loss off the rolls.
Mr. MCHUGH. May I interrupt?
Secretary ABELL. Sure.
Mr. MCHUGH. I think that is true, but that wouldn't be reflected in the statistics we are crowing about right now, because stop loss was in effect when—it is my understanding, it was in effect when those statistics were compiled.
Secretary ABELL. For part of—certainly, for part of the year for——
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Mr. MCHUGH. It skews it.
Secretary ABELL. Yes, sir. It does—it could——
Mr. MCHUGH. What I don't know is, and again, it is not fair of me to ask you a question and then interrupt you, and I apologize, Charlie, but—
Secretary ABELL. No, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. I don't know as there is a hard answer to this. I am just worried we are placing too much optimism in the statistics that are affected by that, but go ahead. I apologize for interrupting.
Secretary ABELL. Well, Mr. Chairman, we worry about recruiting and retention every day. And I—all of us do. And we try to shred that data as many ways as we can to determine whether we are being somehow misled by our own data, and that we can see a trend before it becomes a trend, if you will, looking for the leading indicators that we have got to do something before we get to the crisis.
I am convinced that for the most part, our reports are—reflect ground truth. The—there—I will admit, macro-numbers hide micro-problems, and I think everybody would agree with that, that we have specialties that are more difficult than others. We have shortages in critical specialties out there, and that includes both recruiting and retention. But in the macro sense, we are certainly, as you indicate, looking at historic highs, and with that, sir, I think I would be of better service to let my colleagues talk about their particular service.
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Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. Anybody want to add? General Hagenbeck.
General HAGENBECK. Sir, I would be happy to. You are right about the numbers. In excess of 44,000 stop loss soldiers at any given time. Projections into the next fiscal year could be in the vicinity of 31,000. But there are two parts that I would highlight about that. The primary purpose for stop loss in the future for our Army is a function of the Chief of Staff's initiative for unit stabilization, and what that means, as you well know, as we form up teams that are going back into the theater, we want to keep those teams together from start to finish.
If we continue to do business as we did in the old days, in the Cold War construct, we wouldn't stop loss, but we would have individual replacements flowing in and out of the theater over a given 12 month period, and you would have a very different looking team that would leave the theater.
So, being focused on combat readiness, we thought it prudent to keep these teams together. As we achieve unit stability and force stabilization over the next few years, really through '07, fiscal year 07, the need for stop loss ought to completely evaporate. Now, I don't know that that reality will happen. We will probably have some critical skills that we will always have to manage by the each-es, but by and large, stop loss ought not to be as large a factor in the retention equation as it is today.
To answer the second part of the question, does it obscure what is really going on with regard to retention? I think that in some respects, that possibility certainly exists. The conditions today, certainly in our Army, are different than they have ever been before. Retention figures look pretty solid right now, and I would have to rely on the commanders in the field, who are reporting back to us that they are cautiously optimistic that they will reach their 100 percent goals, or objectives, for retention.
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In addition to their statements, we have ongoing surveys from the Army Research Institute and RAND to continue to pulse our force to see if we see any of these lights blinking that you have suggested, so that we can address those as needed. And we have begun to do that, and we began with the 3rd Infantry Division just this past week, with some targeted Selective Reenlistment Bonus, and to date, it is very, very positive for us, so echoing Mr. Abell's comments, it is something that we worry about every day, and we try to do something about to influence positively every day.
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you, General. Any of the other Chiefs?
General BROWN. Chairman, I would like to make a short comment about the Air Force and the issue on stop loss.
We—I was in this position in August of 2001, was in the building on 9/11 when we were attacked, and I believe it is true that the Air Force, we were the first to initiate stop loss shortly after 9/11, still in the month of September.
I know we were the most aggressive initially with stop loss. We stopped the entire Air Force. We didn't do it by career, field, or by unit. The entire Air Force was put on stop loss. We had never done that before, and it was a very aggressive step. We didn't know what we didn't know, so until we knew how we were going to respond to the global war on terrorism, we thought we better keep everybody in uniform, and then we will sort it out.
So, it was a—not taken lightly. It was a very difficult decision for our Chief and our Secretary. I prompted and pushed that I thought it was the right decision, as DESPER, the Chief of Personnel. We gradually came back off of stop loss over about the next five, six, seven months, to where we were out of the entire stop loss business about a year later.
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Now, I will tell you, we don't even report our retention figures from fiscal year '02 because of the very issue you have raised. It skews the figures. It is impossible to know what kind of retention you have when you won't let anybody out, and you are still bringing folks in. So we don't even report the fiscal year '02 figures, because they are immaterial.
Our greatest concern, when we came off of stop loss, was we were going to have an Air Force that responded to let me out of here, I feel like I am in prison, that they—it is no longer my choice. This is a volunteer force, and we were very pleasantly surprised that we did not get an overreaction, and in fact we have—now, we can measure retention in '03, and now the first six months of '04, and I feel pretty solid that these are real retention figures, and that they are ones that we can hang a hat on.
We should never get complacent to think okay, we are—this is easy, because this business is not easy. We must continue, with your support, to have those incentives, and those benefits that we need to attract the best of young Americans. But stop loss was a very difficult issue for us, and we are thankfully out of that business for now.
Mr. MCHUGH. Well, let me just state for the record, I understand, certainly, post September 11, the need and efficacy of stop loss. I am not objecting to anything right now, but I certainly don't object to that. And it is a necessary tool at time, unfortunately. I do become a bit concerned when it becomes a longer term resource, after you know those unknowns, and when you utilize stop loss as a way to—and I am not accusing anybody of this right now, but as a way to deny the need for end strength adjustment, so we will take that on at another time, but in fairness, Admiral Hoewing.
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Admiral HOEWING. Very quickly, Mr. Chairman, because the Navy used the stop loss very sparingly in very specific skill sets, but two points.
First, we went back and did spot checks using what we call quick polling techniques with those sailors, many of those sailors, that were in fact on stop loss, and were held in position, to see what the impact was on their behavior, and largely, their continuation rates, or their retention behavior, was largely unchanged because of stop loss during the 2001 time frame.
The second piece, to discuss the concept, and you were exactly right. Averages hide everything, the goods and the bads, but what we are working on in the Navy very, very hard right now, are a series of very specific lead and lag indicators of recruiting successes and retention successes, and by—leading indicators are much more difficult. Where we are using these polling techniques, we are using communications with the commanders in the field to get those lead indicators as to whether or not the tone of the force changes. We are so proud of our tone right now, we believe that is going to be the best leading indicator. The lagging indicator, then, are the statistics that follow, very specifically measured against the various skill sets.
Mr. MCHUGH. Well, I am glad to hear that, and you are absolutely right. Leading indicators are a heck of a lot harder to establish and to measure, but they are critical, and it is both on the recruiting and the retention side, and I will pursue that later.
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General Parks, I don't know if you want to make any comments.
General PARKS. I will add, sir——
Mr. MCHUGH. You are leaving, so obviously, you are not in stop loss.
General PARKS. I am indeed not stop loss, sir, and Mr. Abell said, nor is anyone in the Marine Corps today, but we did use it last spring. We used it across the entire Marine Corps. We did it directly for the initial operations into Baghdad, and then ceased it at the end of that, approximately early May.
I would say that, as my colleagues have mentioned, that the aspect of percentages can be deceiving. We are trying to dig into that further. One of the metrics that we are using is matching that percentage against the number of military occupational specialties that are filled, and the numbers that we need.
And at each of the last three years, we have improved in that category, so much so that we established another program to ensure that we had continuation rates for our second term individuals, we needed to put some focus on. We have established a new program. That program currently is 15 percent ahead of last year in its success. So we remain optimistic, and yet, at the same point, we see some things that we are watching very closely, that we are trying to track on, and yet at this point, some Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) are up, others are down, and we don't have a vector that tells us anything statistically significant at this point.
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Mr. MCHUGH. I want to thank you all very much. My colleague has been very patient, and I will yield to Dr. Snyder.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I guess I want to go back to my introductory comments. I need you to—each of you to give us—starting with you, Mr. Secretary, if you would, the what keeps me awake at night list. I mean, if it keeps you awake at night, then it ought to keep us awake at night. I mean, what things do we as a nation and as a military, as a Congress, need to be focused on, that we think needs some work. It may not be going the direction we want. Need some statutory change, needs more money, is got—working fine in the short run, not so good in the long run. I mean, would you all respond to that question for me, please?
Secretary ABELL. Yes, sir. The things that I worry about every day, or think about at night. I am—was absolutely literal when I said I worry about recruiting and retention every day. And my staff listens to me ask them every time they bring me a policy, how does this affect recruiting and retention?
I worry about the suite of compensation and benefits that come, and I worry from the perspective that you and your colleagues are very generous to our folks, and in most cases, our folks deserve everything that you give them. However, I do get worried that it is possible to create a force that is too expensive for the nation, especially when it comes to programs that are essentially deferred compensation, or where the benefits accrue only to those who no longer serve. I worry about the cost of that, and what that does to our labor costs within the Department of Defense.
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And the third thing I worry about every day, sir, is the implementation of the National Security Personnel system that you and others worked so hard on for us last year, that we get to implement that in a way that meets the goals that we all agreed on, and keeps our workforce with us and supporting us. And those are the three things that I worry about every day.
Dr. SNYDER. You can go ahead in line, if you would.
General BROWN. Okay. Yes, sir. Mr. Abell has touched on one that clearly, we all, and that is recruiter intention, and we cannot let that be forgotten. We keep it to the forefront. I think we—I know I can speak for all of us, we—that stays probably first and foremost, for—as the Chiefs of Personnel.
Another one that comes to mind right away for me is ops tempo. And it is not for the entire Air Force. I am not going to pretend to tell you the whole Air Force is on extremely high ops tempo, but we have specific career fields, and we have gotten certain groups of people that we are putting great demands on, and so, as the Chief of Personnel, one of the things that keeps me awake is we are about, you know, I need to get on with trying to do this faster, shaping our Air Force, and trying to redistribute some of the uniforms, some of the personnel within the Air Force into those career fields that have the very high ops tempo.
So, I am going to—we are looking to move some people out of the career fields that are less strenuous, or possibly can be reevaluated for Mil/Civ conversion, possibly outsourcing, and then take those uniforms and those people into those career fields where the tempo is very high right now, and probably will be for the foreseeable future, as long as we have this enemy that brings us into the global war on terrorism.
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That is probably the one area that keeps me awake.
General HAGENBECK. Sir, I want to echo those remarks. I think what I spend my time worrying about is getting it right, when we talk about manning the force. It is for today and for the future, and recognizing that is not necessarily a one for one when you talk about putting somebody in uniform, the compensation associated with them while they serve, and then when they leave our service.
Somebody described it to me before as a spider web that is up in the corner of a room. It is three dimensional, and as you try to get it right, you are cutting and pasting up there, just because you cut one seam on that web, it may have second, third order effects that you may not see immediately, and so there are those kinds of permutations that concern me when we—and I try to work around those edges as best that we can, that we don't be shortsighted in trying to solve today's problem that may cause us more problems or greater problems in the future.
Dr. SNYDER. On the other hand, the—and I know you all know this, you don't want to be so stuck in inertia that nothing ever changes.
General HAGENBECK. Absolutely.
Dr. SNYDER. Because we have been there before, too.
General HAGENBECK. Yes, sir.
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Dr. SNYDER. Admiral.
Admiral HOEWING. Thank you, sir. I had mentioned leading indicators a few minutes ago. I am worried that we got the right leading indicators, that it does sneak up on us, and therefore, I worry also about having the flexibility with incentives soon enough to be able to make sure that we can counter what could become a trend in one direction. Let us say enlistment bonuses or retention bonuses in specific areas. I worry that we don't have enough flexibility to increase those bonuses as the market requires, and I would also say from a personal perspective, as we do major transformation, with that comes cultural change. Communicating to the force about the extents of—the extensiveness of the transformation that goes on, I worry about that, also, because we need to make sure that our leaders and those sailors that are working for them fully understand that are communicating all of those things that are necessary to help them shape that culture of the future.
General PARKS. Sir, I would only add what—one aspect of which is really a restatement of what my colleagues have said, and some of the things that they have said as well, but it goes back to the heart of the Chairman's question, and that is you have asked for my advice. I have—as has been mentioned as well, I am leaving the Marine Corps this year to retire, and I just want to make sure I give you the best advice.
We are weighing a lot of factors here. We are working really hard to tell you what is right to reflect in the mirror to make sure we have got it right. That is the piece that keeps me awake. Are we calling it right? Are the commitments going to overburden us, versus the end strength, the challenges, and the burdens that we have? We work real hard to try to make sure we have provided the right insight into that.
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Dr. SNYDER. General Parks, you were with the First Recon in Vietnam, weren't you?
General PARKS. I was, yes, sir.
Dr. SNYDER. Were you one of those guys that rode around at the—underneath the helicopter, sitting on a ladder?
General PARKS. Unfortunately, I was. Yes, sir.
Dr. SNYDER. Do you foresee that is going to help you in any kind of—in retirement?
General PARKS. It—only the fact that I held on real tight.
Dr. SNYDER. It scared the hell out of me just to watch. I wanted to ask Mr. Secretary, with regard to the Selective Reenlistment Bonus Program, Government Accountability Office (GAO) had a—some recommendations in the study, I don't remember what the time frame was, but—that dealt with—they suggested an annual review, some consistent procedures and metrics so that it could be reviewed. Would you just respond to how do you—have you all made some changes in response to GAO, or rejected them, or what—give us an update on that, if you would.
Secretary ABELL. Happy to, sir. We have established the reviews. We have developed metrics that, in conjunction with my colleagues here at the table, we are codifying those in the Department of Defense regulation, and I believe one of the other findings of the General Accounting Office was that at the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) level, we didn't have in place a document that demonstrated that we were providing oversight, and we are developing staffing right now to Department of Defense instruction, which is a regulation, that establishes the procedures that were already in place, that shows that we are monitoring it.
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That is close to being done. My staff would tell you, if they were here, that I am the cause of the delay, because they have brought it to me a couple of times, and I have sent it back to say where is this piece, where is that piece, but they have been working diligently since the GAO report came out.
So, I would tell you that we have the things in place, and the part we are doing now is the regulatory codification of those.
Dr. SNYDER. Is your routine to let the Committee know when you reach that conclusion, when you—or will you—were you planning on doing that, or—is there a process for doing that, or——
Secretary ABELL. You know, sir, I don't know, but we certainly will.
Dr. SNYDER. You would.
Secretary ABELL. Yes, sir.
Dr. SNYDER. That would be great. And you mentioned the conversion from military to civilian. The position you are in now, is there upfront cost associated with that, because you are going to create some civilian positions, and take your military people, and put them into places where you think you need them more? But where is the money coming from? Is that coming out of someone's hide now?
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Secretary ABELL. Yes, sir.
Dr. SNYDER. How is—I don't know who to ask. I mean, somebody is—must not be very excited about where that money is coming from.
Secretary ABELL. I will certainly let my colleagues talk about their service-specific areas, but as you know, within the Department of Defense, there is no free money. There is no new money, so when a decision is made to do something like this, that has a cost that was not previously budgeted, then we have to find the resources within our budgets, and that, in this case, means within the service budgets, and that is what the program budget decision directed the Service Chiefs and Secretaries to do.
Dr. SNYDER. We have had this ongoing discussion, you know, Mr. Secretary, but it seems like that is something that could have been budgeted for, that if you are going to make these conversions, you are establishing new civilian positions, we don't expect those to be a surge or for three months or six months, or only as emergency, we expect those to be ongoing costs. I would assume that you are creating only positions you think you are going to need for some period of time. Why wouldn't—why wasn't that made as part of President's budget?
Secretary ABELL. In the '05 budget, which you have before you, it certainly is budgeted.
Dr. SNYDER. Some of it is, okay.
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Secretary ABELL. But in fairness now, sir, the service folks——
Dr. SNYDER. It just takes a year to catch up. Is that what we are saying?
Secretary ABELL. Well, the service folks would say that even though there is money in the '05 budget, they already thought they were going to do something else with that money.
Dr. SNYDER. I see.
Secretary ABELL. So, even in an '05, or even if we look forward to '06, they already have all the money accounted for, and then we say this is a program that is important. The Service Secretaries agree, and then, that means that somebody has got to go in and shift that money around, so it is a matter of perspective, I guess. We—at OSD level, we are going to say this is funded. The services are going to say we didn't get any money to do this. We are both going to be right.
Dr. SNYDER. I understand. One last question, if I might, Mr. Chairman, is on child care.
Secretary ABELL. Yes, sir.
Dr. SNYDER. Ops tempo, was mentioned, I think, by General Brown most eloquently, but longer hours means need for more child care, more people deployed, I think means more, if you have one parent that goes, more need for child care. And yet, I think the Administration budget has essentially been a flat line with regard to child care. I mean, where are we at with child care funding?
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Secretary ABELL. Yes, sir. It—the budget for child care went up 50 million from '04 to '05, which is essentially a flat line. It is a modest increase, I grant. There was also money, another 21 million, in the supplement, supplemental, which went to child care as a direct cost of the longer hours and the increased op tempo, but that doesn't meet our needs fully. We recognize that. We are working, very aggressively, an initiative to try and leverage off-base facilities, if we can subsidize the availability of child care for our families in off-base facilities, either though direct subsidy, or through some sort of payments in kind. Maybe we could put some of our people in their facilities, increase their capacity. We are working those issues very hard to try and get at this. We are about, by our own reports, 40,000 child care spaces short across the Department, and we think if we can leverage the private sector, we will be able to get that shortage down.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I work better probably with a red light, I think I got carried away. I am sorry.
Mr. MCHUGH. Be careful what you pray for. Well, I thank the gentleman, and he didn't get carried away at all. Let me just editorialize here for a minute. I wish Secretary Abell were my high school math teacher. I might be a physicist today. But right, you are right.
I think the Congress—I—well, let me speak for myself. I think there were two misconceptions, either rightly or wrongly, certainly that I had on this civilian and military conversion issue.
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The first is that we would see it funded on a one per one basis, and that has not happened, and I think the Administration and the Department would say we have finally put some money into it '05. I think there is some validity to that. But the other misconception is for every military person we took out of a so-called civilian position, we are going to put another civilian in, and that hasn't been the case at all, so there——
Secretary ABELL. No, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. This is a much different program than many of us perceived it to be, not to—that doesn't necessarily categorize it one way or another, but just to say it is different. And I think it bears watching, because you know, I don't—obviously, we all want to see the military funded at sufficient levels, but I am also not sure we are staffing those former positions to the level necessary to do the job that is before us. So, for whatever that is worth, I thought I would throw that out there.
With that, well, in essence, a very long-winded way, it is an election year. I am saying I agree with the gentleman fully. Let me yield to the gentlelady from California, Ms. Sanchez.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Are we using it?
Secretary ABELL. I am. But you are——
Ms. SANCHEZ. Be nice. Thank you for coming before us today. I actually have a couple questions for Secretary Abell, and I think you are probably anticipating this, because you brought it up in your official testimony.
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You said that your office has made—had begun implementing nearly 45 of the 200 recommendations issued by the Domestic Task Force on—the Defense Task Force on Domestic Violence.
Secretary ABELL. That is right.
Ms. SANCHEZ. I am glad that you are making progress, but I have some questions with respect to that. First of all, do you have adequate funding to implement the program? And if not, can you provide an estimate of the financial shortfall? Second, what are you doing to ensure that the recommendations are being implemented in a uniform fashion across all the services? And how do you intend to provide oversight for that? What are you doing to get out the information on the domestic—that domestic violence will not be tolerated? I—you know, I have been—obviously talking to members of the Task Force continuously, and I think it would be beneficial for the Department of Defense to hold a series of stop sexual violence against women in the military conferences, for installation officers, for commanding officers, for Judge Advocate General (JAG) officers, in order to drive the point home that this is serious business and we really mean this, not just send out a packet of information, which is probably what you are about to tell me that you have been doing so far.
How do you feel about holding that type of a conference, and how are you making sure that this is a priority within the armed forces?
Secretary ABELL. I—let me start backwards, if I will. If you would. The conference, absolutely. We actually have a conference, a worldwide conference, planned in June, to do exactly as you say, to bring folks in from our installations and our commands all over the world, to talk about just this issue, to talk about the implementation, to talk about the policies, to get the word out. We ensure our uniform implementation by providing oversight from the departmental level, at the various service levels. We get the word out through passing out papers, through using command information channels, through making it a topic of discussions at various command level staff calls, if you will.
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It is—the effort this year. We have an office that works for me, to do—that does every—their day to day duty is to work on implementation of the 200 odd recommendations. Just to update you, from time to time, the statement was written—until today, we are up to 65 now, from 45, so——
Ms. SANCHEZ. Beginning implementation, fully implemented?
Secretary ABELL. These are implemented.
Ms. SANCHEZ. These are——
Secretary ABELL. These are—the policies are done. They are out there. They are beginning to be implemented. Big department, as you know. And the funding, that office has a budget of $10 million. We believe that to be adequate. We have no reason, at this point, to believe that it will come up short, and if it does, we will go to our colleagues in the Comptroller and seek a reprogramming to make sure that it has enough money. But we are—right now, we have no indications that that is an inadequate budget.
Ms. SANCHEZ. So—you mentioned, you said that it—part of the oversight was to send people out.
Secretary ABELL. Yes.
Ms. SANCHEZ. What does that mean? What is—what does that look like? Where do you send them out? How many people do you have doing this for you?
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Secretary ABELL. Okay. The office is about— my implementation office is about four. They work with their service colleagues. We leverage each of the services teams on this as well. All the services have conferences, family action conferences, sexual harassment, sexual harassment conferences. We make sure our folks are there, and this is part of the agenda. We—again, using command information and normal chain of command activities, staff calls, commander calls, if you will, to pass out this information.
Ms. SANCHEZ. And this is new since we have received back the information from the Domestic Task Force, or this has just been an ongoing thing?
Secretary ABELL. No. This implementation office was formed as the Task Force concluded.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay. Just making sure that it was something, not something that was——
Secretary ABELL. Yes, ma'am. It is post Task Force. As a matter of fact, I just last week signed the papers that would extend that Task Force yet another year. It is an annual thing, and so I just extended it yet another year.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay. I would also like you to comment on your approach to tackling sexual assault. I know that Ms. Embrey is charged with ensuring that we have appropriate measures in place to respond to sexual assault, and hopefully we will get her findings shortly.
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But I have a few questions that I hope you can answer for me today. I would like you to describe the care that is available to sexual assault victims at combat support hospitals in Iraq. I am particularly interested to know what kind of psychological care is offered. And can you verify that there are trained rape trauma counselors at every combat support hospital now deployed?
Secretary ABELL. Well, okay. As I traveled, I visited every combat support hospital in Iraq while I was there. What I saw were, and I asked these questions is a more general way than you have asked, so I will tell you what I believe, and then I will, for the record, make sure that that is accurate, if that is okay. Yes, there was—there were trained people, and adequate equipment, kits if you will, to do the necessary forensic work for someone who had—who came in reporting a sexual assault.
Ms. SANCHEZ. So you saw rape kits at every——
Secretary ABELL. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. SANCHEZ [continuing]. Combat hospital?
Secretary ABELL. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Psychological?
Secretary ABELL. Yes. There is—there are psychological counselors in the theater, not—I can't tell you that they are in every combat support hospital, but they are in the theater. Now, there may be—they may be in every combat support hospital. I didn't ask that specific question. And I think—was there another question in there?
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Ms. SANCHEZ. No, you answered those.
Secretary ABELL. Okay, but I—but let me also get our—get my folks to confirm——
Ms. SANCHEZ. Right.
Secretary ABELL [continuing]. Those things for the record for you.
Ms. SANCHEZ. That would be great. It is my understanding that there is emergency contraceptive available for women in Iraq and Afghanistan in the event of a rape, at the larger combat support hospitals. But I don't think that they are available at the smaller deployed units. Is that an accurate statement?
Secretary ABELL. I didn't ask that question, but I would not challenge that. I would think that was how that would probably be done.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Is it possible to provide emergency contraception at smaller field hospitals?
Secretary ABELL. I——
Ms. SANCHEZ. I mean, what do we have if a woman is forward deployed, and she is at one of these smaller hospitals, and she comes in and she says she was raped, and she thinks, you know, and she is worried about being pregnant?
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Secretary ABELL. She would go to a combat support hospital. The problem with the scenario you described is that there is really nothing between the clinic, the unit level aid clinic, if you will, and the combat support hospitals. There are no sort of intermediate hospitals there. So, if the problem presents—any problem, medical problem presents at the unit level, at the clinics, and it is—it exceeds their capacity, then the individual goes to one of the combat support hospitals.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Emergency contraception is a very timely issue, so—you know, you can go back and ask your people.
Secretary ABELL. I will.
Dr. GINGREY. Mr. Chairman. Will the gentlelady yield for just a second? Would the gentlelady yield for——
Ms. SANCHEZ. Certainly, Doctor.
Dr. GINGREY [continuing]. A very friendly comment? It is an important point that you bring up, of course, but as an obgyn physician, there is a 72 hour window of opportunity there, and I——
Ms. SANCHEZ. Right.
Dr. GINGREY [continuing]. Just thought I would mention that to you, for emergency contraception.
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Ms. SANCHEZ. Right, and that is what—the question I was just going to ask. Within 72—remember, that sometimes the woman doesn't report it necessarily within the first 24 hours, let us say. I am just saying, if she came to you a day after she was raped at a unit, and said I was raped and I need some emergency contraceptive, is there enough time to get her to the combat hospital where that would be available?
Secretary ABELL. Certainly. They are not in Baghdad—well, there is one in Baghdad, but they are also scattered among the—in the outlying installations, in close proximity to the troop concentrations.
Ms. SANCHEZ. And it would be our policy to get her that, to get her there, to get her that if that is what she wanted?
Secretary ABELL. Yes, ma'am.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay. That is what I am trying to find out. Thank you, Doctor. I wasn't—I am aware. It is just that it is a very time sensitive thing, and you know, for a woman to come out and say I have this problem is a very difficult thing. Let me ask you, is abortion offered at combat support hospitals in the event of rape?
Secretary ABELL. My—I will get that for the record, my gut reaction is they are not equipped for that, but I don't know.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Okay. All right. I have some other questions, but do we get to keep going, like Dr. Snyder, or——
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Dr. SNYDER. Longer time.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Oh, please, Victor. You are crazy.
Mr. MCHUGH. Let us—I want to provide everyone, let us move on, and then we will certainly come back to the gentlelady.
Ms. SANCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you. The Vice Chairman, the gentleman from Oklahoma, Mr. Cole.
Mr. COLE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and we are glad you are a good chairman, rather than a great physicist, because they are a lot rarer and harder to find. Let me, I am going to ask a couple of questions, if I may, Mr. Secretary. And let me preface with them, because I don't want them to be misunderstood in any way at all. I think very much that great soldiers come from every area, every social class, every demographic group, and all people have the potential, and frankly, the issue of our military, I think really shows that, as we have provided, historically, minorities opportunities to serve, they have become obviously many of our greatest soldiers, as we have become more gender-integrated in the service, that has been a terrific asset for us. I think the more we have expanded opportunities to serve, the more we have gone to look for people, sometimes, from untraditional categories or backgrounds, the better off we have been as a military, so with that as a preface, are there certain, you know, if you were a football coach, I promise you there are pools geographically that you recruit. You know there is a lot of good football players in Texas. There is a high school culture, if you will, that encourages great football in Texas, and believe me, we in Oklahoma know it, because we get about half of them, that we used—our Texas players are usually better than their Texas players every year.
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So, given that, what are the pools that you draw off of now, geographically, socially, demographically, and what, if you do ever think and look that way, in terms of how you deploy your recruiting sources, and what are the sorts of things you do, if you are doing them, to think beyond that, into different pools, and different groups, in an effort to reach out and literally provide that opportunity to serve, and meet your needs in terms of quality soldiers?
Secretary ABELL. Now I will, again, start off, and then commend to my colleagues to give you the more direct answers, as they are the ones who deploy those recruiters. From the OSD level, we are not willing to concede one sector of this nation as an area that is not fruitful enough to deserve to have recruiters working every day in that area.
Many studies would indicate to us that we could probably fill our recruiting needs from the southern one third of our nation, across the two coasts, but in the southern third, but like you, we want that cross-section. We think America deserves and wants that cross-section, and so we—these gentlemen send their recruiters in to do tough duty in places where the propensity is not as great as it is, perhaps, in Texas, for instance, but—so from the OSD level, our policy is that we leave no area uncovered, and people work harder in certain sections of the country than maybe they have to in others, but——
Mr. COLE. So does that mean literally, geographically, your forces, your recruiting forces, if you will, are about equally deployed around the country, and——
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Secretary ABELL. I think—I wouldn't tell you they are equally deployed, but they are represented everywhere.
Mr. COLE. Okay. Let me—just following on that line for a second, you know, I would assume one of the great predictors of a propensity to serve is a family tradition of service. I mean, you must get, of course, many of your soldiers have seen their parents before them, or members of their family serve, and that is a shrinking pool, as we all know, unfortunately. The other thing that worries me is, and I see this—you mentioned the southern one third, and of course, southerners, and myself being one of them, well, you know, we have this great martial tradition, and all that. I think we have got a whole lot more military facilities than any place else in the world, too. And that makes an enormous difference when you see, and you are surrounded by that culture, if you will, which has so many admirable traits associated with it. Do you ever worry about the BRAC process in terms of literally costing you catchment areas, if you will, of people that have an exposure to military culture and the tradition of service associated with it?
Secretary ABELL. The honest answer, sir, is no, I have never worried about the BRAC process in regard to recruiting. The—as I said, we recruit without regard to where the bases are. The BRAC process is going to recognize our most essential bases, our largest bases, and for all—I know while every community worries, you or I could probably draw up a piece of—on a piece of paper the bases that aren't going to close, put it on——
Mr. COLE. I am not—really not fishing for——
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Secretary ABELL. Right.
Mr. COLE [continuing]. That kind of answer. I believe—this is not a backdoor into the BRAC——
Secretary ABELL. No, I understand. I just—but no, I have not worried about that.
Mr. COLE. Okay.
Secretary ABELL. We do worry about influencers. We do worry that more high school counselors are unfamiliar with the military, and we have programs to try and get to those influencers to the football coaches and the basketball coaches, and to the high school counselors. That is one of the reasons we so strongly support the Troops to Teachers Program, where former military people go into the schools as teachers, and become those role models in areas where they may not have a military role model.
Mr. MCHUGH. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. COLE. Yes, I yield to the Chairman.
Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the Vice Chairman for yielding. He has raised a very important point, and Mr. Secretary, I think you, if I may, I think you answered the question exactly as you should. Because BRAC should, at its most fundamental level, be a military value exercise, but I think the gentleman from Oklahoma points out some very important realities, and that is there is a reason, when a United States citizen walks down the street and sees someone in uniform, they don't cower in fear, as I have seen them do in other countries.
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Not the least of that reason is we currently have a military basing structure, whether by design or by accident, that brings military facilities into every part of this nation. And I respectfully would suggest that it is awfully damn important that that continue to the greatest extent possible, because it is critical to recruitment. And in fact, I felt so strongly about it, I introduced a piece of legislation, an amendment in the National Defense Authorization Act two years ago that, in fact, requires that in the base closing procedure, and this isn't your domain—I am not chastising you, Mr. Secretary—requires that, amongst some other indices we put in there, that there is a distribution of geographical consideration that comes into the BRAC closure process.
There is a couple different reasons for that. One is national security. September 11 told us, it should have taught us that it is good to have the access to military facilities throughout the country. The other is to ensure that the military, be it whatever—whichever branch, is not some foreign, unknown, rarely seen entity in any part of this country. So I just wanted to put that on the record, and the gentleman, as I said, raised a good point, and the Congress is—I am pleased to say, and I think I am being fair in making this assumption, and its resounding support both in the committee level and in the full House level, is of that belief as well. And you don't need to comment on that. That wasn't my intent, but——
Mr. COLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the gentleman for bringing it up, and thank him for yielding.
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Mr. COLE. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me just continue a couple other things along those lines, just to get responses, or perhaps you can just help me in my thing, because I think this really is a really important question that we face as a society, and there is a lot of good things happening right now. You know, my experience, probably the esteem in which the military is held today is probably higher than any time since the Vietnam era, and I think legitimately so. It has actually been one of the good things about the debate, which is a very legitimate debate, over Iraq, is that I have seen neither side denigrate the military in the course of that. Quite the opposite, they have fallen all over themselves, and again, appropriately so, to express appreciation for the service of people over there, and if we are going to have a debate, it is a political debate as to what we have decided as political leaders to do.
But there is a deep appreciation, I think, on both sides of that debate, for what men and women in uniform have done. As I reflect back on why 18, 19, and 20 year olds make decisions, it is quite often gratification in the best sense of the word, not compensation only. It is the idea of doing something meaningful, and something honorable with their lives, and what is recognized in their communities as a terrific service, something to be appreciated and praised.
As you think through, you know, how you recruit, and obviously, you have to deploy most of your resources and efforts to get that person that you are after, in terms of skills and background and what have you, but you know, what do you—do you also spend some time when—you have some excellent public relations (PR). I mean, you have excellent commercials, excellent—in terms of, you know, expanding that appreciation. I think it makes a big difference. And unfortunately, I tend to see a little bit more of this directed—I would argue we ought to be spending a little bit more money, a little bit more effort, aimed at—in communities that are relatively affluent, where I think their kids are more likely to be headed off to college or whatever, that they have the same exposure. Sometimes, you know, we talk about gosh, if we lose them at high school or something like that, they go on to college. I recognize the percentage of—your percentage of chance of getting them goes down a little bit. At the same time, building that sense of service and opportunity among different groups of—frankly sometimes relatively privileged as opposed to disadvantaged groups might be a good thing to do.
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Secretary ABELL. I am—yes, sir. We do that. Well, there is a division of effort, if you will. At the OSD level, our efforts are, in that regard, are aimed at influencers. At the service level, they are aimed at the recruit, and so those programs that—for which I have direct responsibility, we are after the coaches, the counselors, the mom and dad, the uncle, whomever would be the influencer of the young man or young lady, and then we transition to the service recruiters, who go after the individual young man or young woman, and I think they could probably explain how they do it as—better than I.
Mr. COLE. If you indulge me, I would love to hear.
General BROWN. Congressman Cole, let me start with being a Texas boy who moved to Tulsa and spent most of my high school years at Tulsa Hale, then was recruited back to Texas to play ball. I know exactly what you are talking about.
Mr. COLE. You could be a politician when you leave.
General BROWN. You need to know I am a Texas Christian University graduate, with my master's from the University of Oklahoma. So I sit right on that border. The—it is critical to our Air Force, and I think all the services would say this same statement, that we attract, recruit, and retain Americans from across the entire United States, and Guam, I would add, and Puerto Rico, the areas that are—that where—our people live. We do not want to just recruit those football players from Texas to come back to Oklahoma. That is not what our business is. Our business is serving the entire nation. So we really want Americans from across the whole nation. It would be easier just to recruit from those very high intensity places where we are congregated, where we are seen and exposed. Those are our highest—easiest recruiting places, but that is not the kind of Air Force we want to have. We want to have one that represents the entire nation, so we probably work harder in places where we are not very well known, where we may not have based nearby, but we work hard there.
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We also try to look to the future. What kind of America are we going to have in the future? Not just next year, but 5, 10, 15, 20 years from now. What is the demographic of our nation, and we are concerned today about trying to attract into that demographic kind of environment, so that again, we reflect and look like America, 15, 20, 30 years from now. And as I look back over our history, and where we are today, and where we are trying to go, you see the demographic changes in our force that are reflective of similar demographic changes across the nation.
Mr. COLE. Well, I want to compliment you gentlemen on doing just that, and frankly, thinking that way, and approaching this task in that matter. I just—I think it is absolutely critical in terms of performance today and in the future. Mr. Chairman, I will certainly give up my—I have got a series of questions about the guard, but I will ask them at another time more appropriate.
Thank you for your indulgence.
Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you.
Mr. COLE. And thank you gentlemen.
Mr. MCHUGH. I thank the Vice Chairman, the distinguished Vice Chairman. The gentleman from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey.
Dr. GINGREY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will—in fact, I will continue just a little bit, of my colleague from Oklahoma's line of questioning, because it has—kind of stimulated me to think about this a little bit, too. And I have said on this Subcommittee before to previous panels, how I wish we literally had a junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program in every high school, in every nook and cranny, not just Oklahoma and Georgia, but everywhere in this country, and so, then, I—based on what—Tom's line of questioning, I am thinking—how hard do we recruit in the private school sector, and are we—is it even allowed, maybe it is common, and I am just not aware of it, that you have ROTC programs in private, nonpublic, non-military focused high schools, and if not, why not? I think that—when I go back to my district, which you know, as an endangered species freshman member, I do every week, looking for some opportunity to do something good and meaningful, and a lot of time, that is visiting with the high schools, and speaking to them, maybe about what we do here on the Committee, the Subcommittee, Total Force, and the fact that we have such a bipartisan group of men and women in the Congress, 61 of us, I believe, that probably all have been to Iraq and seen the boots on the ground, and realize—and the kids love it. They literally—I mean, especially, of course, if it is an ROTC class. They love it. So, I had a line of questions I wanted to ask, but Congressman Cole, I thought, really brought up such an interesting point and something that I sort of have a passion for, too, so I have switched gears completely, but maybe I could get you all to continue on his line of questioning, and answer that, if you would.
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General PARKS. Sir, I will be glad to take that on. I have had several tours in recruiting, and it is an area that is near and dear to my heart. Picking up, in regard to the initial thrust and carrying over to your comment. I think we approach it from the standpoint in regard to the earlier question of one area better than another. What we found is the leadership of who we put in charge, like most anything else in life, makes a huge difference. Next would be the quality of the individual recruiter that you put out there to represent your military, because that young man or woman who looks to that recruiter is typically not saying where will I be a year from now, what will I do 15 years from now? They look at that individual and say I want to be like him or her. I picture myself doing this, and I like what I see. Or I don't.
In regard to the display across the—or the distribution across the country, I know we have looked at it from the standpoint of an internal structuring conference, and said, back to General Brown's comments on where will people be in 10 years, 5 years, one of the things we realized a few years ago was, as we looked at it, the fastest growing city in the Nation was Las Vegas, Nevada, and we didn't have a recruiting station there. We needed to get one there, because of that population shift.
As far as locations, we believe that no area does not have propensity, that the recruiter and the recruiter's leadership create that propensity to enlist, by virtue of their energy. In regard to the family tradition and those kind of things, clearly, we have got a dying population, unfortunately, of wonderful Americans who have given a great deal for our country, and so we have to reach out in order to continue to create that visibility with the influencers. There are a number of things that we are doing, the commercials that were mentioned, the access to different programs. Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has a great—McDonalds sponsored—McDonalds Corporation sponsors the National Salute to the U.S. Military in Fort Lauderdale. That is just a wonderful outreach to address just the kinds of concerns that you raised. As far as the private school aspect, I believe that there is no single way there. It is the networking, the contact, the referral, the access, that the individual in that particular city or town that has that kind of a school opens those doors through his or her contacts in order to get access in there, so that we reach every aspect of the market, if you will, that we can possibly get to.
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Admiral HOEWING. A comment, also, sir. There is one area that I would like to highlight, that we in the Navy have really put some emphasis and funding behind this year, and we call it our Strategic Diversity Initiative. Specifically, to where we are expanding the definition far beyond minorities and equal opportunity, into the whole concept of diversity, and have put together four specific projects, one on recruiting, one on retention, one on growth and development and mentoring, and then finally, on communications to our Navy and the nation, in order to go out and literally engage the marketplace in the diverse type nature that it is. We have also merged our recruiting efforts from active and reserve in the Navy, which now gives us even greater access to the nation, because we have active recruiters in what used to be reserve recruiting stations, so by merging those forces, we have actually expanded our capability, and we are looking for the United States Navy, whether they come into the United States Navy active or reserve, and pool those resources together.
So, it has been a—in fact, I would also add that we have learned a lot of things in the Navy from our friends in the Marine Corps when it comes to recruiting. They do it extremely well, and we are changing many of our business processes to learn some best practices from our colleagues.
Dr. GINGREY. Well, if somebody would comment, again, on the specific questions, I mean, you are speaking to a—generally, and I appreciate that, that is very helpful, but——
General BROWN. Congressman, I will——
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Dr. GINGREY [continuing]. Try the specific questions—General Brown, thank you.
General BROWN. Specific—Junior ROTC. Junior ROTC, the high school level ROTC, is truly a citizenship program. It is not a recruiting program. Now, the number of Junior ROTC units, I believe, a year or so ago, was in the neighborhood of 600, and is going up to 900 or 950. It is increasing, because we think it is a tremendous program for our nation, to show the value of good citizenship, of kids who learn some discipline. They put on a uniform and they show self-respect, and every high school that has it talks highly about it, and others want it. So, we are part of helping—all of us are part of helping increase that program, but it is truly a citizenship program for our Nation.
Now, I am not going to tell you we don't get benefits. We do. And we can, we find often folks who will spend—these kids who spend time in the Junior ROTC program then have a propensity to either join one of our services, or to go into the ROTC program at the college level. College level ROTC, which is—those are our programs, and they clearly are recruiting programs, to recruit folks into our Officer Corps, and they are in both public and private institutions across our nation, and there are—they probably make up for the Air Force—half of our officer force comes through our college, university ROTC program.
Dr. GINGREY. And again, my specific question, though, in regard to the Junior ROTC program, and I realize it is not a recruiting program, that it is a citizenship effort, and that is good, and I think ultimately, it certainly can be, is a recruiting program, but is it permitted, that is a very specific question, to have a Junior ROTC program in a private, nonpublic high school?
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General BROWN. Sir, I have got to admit I don't know the answer, I don't know if Mr. Abell does——
Dr. GINGREY. If you could—if somebody could—on the panel could——
General BROWN [continuing]. The record——
Dr. GINGREY [continuing]. Get that—answer that specific question——
Secretary ABELL. Sir, I will——
Dr. GINGREY [continuing]. To me, I would appreciate it.
Secretary ABELL. I will take that for the record.
Dr. GINGREY. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. MCHUGH. The gentleman yield?
Dr. GINGREY. Yeah.
Mr. MCHUGH. Gentlemen, in my opening statement, I mentioned we have got some deadlines coming up in December with respect to imminent danger pay (IDP), family separation pay (FSP). That is a subset of the larger debate about what kind of differences do we maintain with respect to the active and the reserve component? Do we need to continue to ensure that there are distinctions, and the way you demonstrate those distinctions are through such things as compensation, reenlistment bonuses, et cetera? And I am just curious, and I guess this, certainly I would be very interested in our military folks' response to how you balance those needs, but I am curious first with Secretary Abell, Mr. Secretary, has the Department, or will the Department take a position with respect to those two particular pays, and the extension of those, and if so, would you like to state that for the record here today?
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Secretary ABELL. Mr. Chairman, it—I have anticipated that we would be asked about those two pays, and——
Mr. MCHUGH. A wise anticipation.
Secretary ABELL. So, we have , in fact, thought about a way ahead there, and I think where we are is, in my view, the higher level of imminent danger pay is a sound way of proceeding, and I would not voice any objection to having that continued permanently in that regard. I need to preface this by saying none of these comments have been submitted to nor cleared by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), but——
Mr. MCHUGH. You are a brave man, Charlie.
Secretary ABELL. On family separation allowance, I am a little less sanguine that that is—that the program at the higher levels accomplishes what, perhaps, was the intent when that was enacted. It provides a higher benefit to the entire force if you are away from home for more than 30 days. If it was the intent to try and compensate those folks who were—who are in the combat zones, or actively engaged in the global war on terror in an area where they are receiving imminent danger, it got them, but it also got the rest of the force.
And so, on that one, if that was your intent, you accomplished it. If your intent was to look at the—at a way to adequately compensate the force that was at risk, most at risk, the force that was—the part of the force that was—facing the greatest danger, you got them. You got part of them. But it doesn't get the single soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine anything. We are going to ask you, or have asked you, in our legislative proposals this year, to increase the cap on the hazardous duty pay. That would allow us, then, to provide, in a targeted way, to those folks who are at risk, higher levels of compensation than the rest of the force and the fleet might get.
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And so, I submit to you that there may be a formula here where the—where we could use the hazardous duty pay to reward both the married and the single who are in those more dangerous areas, and then that would allow us to adjust the family separation allowance back to a level that is most indicated by where it should be adjusted against the economic factors. Clearly, its old level was not correct. It hadn't been adjusted in years. But if we apply the inflation factors, that number would come to about $125 a month—vice—the higher level which is going to expire in December.
Mr. MCHUGH. Well, I thank you for that. We haven't seen that proposal yet, so——
Secretary ABELL. Well, what I just described to you wasn't a proposal, but the—except for the hazardous duty pay.
Mr. MCHUGH. Well, that is the——
Secretary ABELL. Understanding.
Mr. MCHUGH. You are right, that is what I——
Secretary ABELL. Yes.
Mr. MCHUGH [continuing]. Was referring to specifically.
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Secretary ABELL. Okay.
Mr. MCHUGH. I can tell you didn't run it by OMB, because imminent danger pay, there is no money in the budget request for it, so I suspect while you philosophically support it——
Secretary ABELL. We are in—the budget—for the '05 request, the higher FSA and the higher IDP are funded through its December 31, '04 termination, and then, beyond that, what is in our budget is the higher hazardous duty pay that we have requested.
Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. Because that—perhaps I didn't make that clear enough. I was asking with respect to post-December 31.
Secretary ABELL. Right. It is not in there, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. Thank you. I don't know if any of our service reps want to respond to that. And by the way, Mr. Secretary, do you want to talk about—it is a philosophical question, and you have already been here a long—all of you have been here a long time, and we have another panel to go, but how do we negotiate the sticky wickets of—understanding the reserve component today is out there and doing great work on a high ops and personnel tempo basis, and yet the philosophical position that there really should be some distinctions between active and reserve, even when they are fighting side by side.
Any suggestions off the top of your head?
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Secretary ABELL. Again, sir, at some—probably some personal risk, I don't know. When a reservist is on active duty, his benefits should be the same as the active duty sailor, soldier, airman, Marine that they serve beside. It is when they are not on active duty, when they are in their selected reserve status, that I think there ought to be a difference in the benefits suite, and it ought to be commensurate with the lesser duty that they are performing.
Mr. MCHUGH. How about—and we saw a number of these last year in consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act, and I am absolutely positive we will see more this year, the initiatives to, in essence, hold guard and reservists harmless, if you will, to make up the differences between what they are receiving during those active deployments, and what they would receive in the private sector pay.
Secretary ABELL. Let me just give you my personal view again. I think that the high quality of folks that we recruit, that these gentlemen recruit for both the active and the reserve are well aware of the pay that they will receive and the benefits that will accrue to them when they serve on active duty. At the same time, the reservists are also well aware of what their compensation package is when they are not on active duty, and that when they are then activated, those few who cry foul, I think, are being a little disingenuous to us. I think they know full well when they serve all those years and months in their reserve status, what the price would be if it is not—if it doesn't fit with their household needs, then that is when some action should be taken.
I may be in the minority view here, but that is my view.
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Mr. MCHUGH. General Hagenbeck.
General HAGENBECK. Now, I would just underscore that—if I could, that Army's position is that a soldier, whether reserve or active duty, of a given pay grade, ought to receive the same pay.
Mr. MCHUGH. Let me, then, I appreciate that, and I know General Hagenbeck has been out on the battlefield circumstance in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and I am sure the others of you have experience as well, could you characterize for me the tension that might—and maybe there is none, I don't know—the tension that might result in a battlefield situation where you have got an active guy there earning whatever the table calls for him or her to earn, and a reserve person who, because we have in the goodness of our hearts, and well-intended, have enacted a bridge, that is to pay them additionally, so that they are not losing money back home, would that be a morale problem on the field?
General HAGENBECK. Sir, from my perspective, it absolutely would be. As I said, Army's position is that whatever your rank is, reserve or active duty, you ought to receive the same benefits under those particular conditions.
Mr. MCHUGH. Any others want to comment? Admiral.
Admiral HOEWING. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to add also, I fully agree with my colleagues here, and I would add that for the mobilized reservists, we have had about 22,000 since the 11th of September in the Navy, 99.9 percent of those great Americans have volunteered to do so. They were called and they wanted to do it. So I believe that that is an indication of the types of people that we are bringing in to our active and reserve components, and I believe that they would support the concept that they would be paid the same as their active duty compatriots working right alongside of them.
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Mr. MCHUGH. Thank you. General Parks.
General PARKS. I would only add to what you have already heard, but just from another voice, sir, and that is that the key to me is the active duty. Whether that individual is a reserve or a regular component service member, that when they are on active duty, they earn the same entitlements.
Mr. MCHUGH. Everybody is——
General PARKS. Exactly the same, sir.
Mr. MCHUGH. Okay. And let me just for point of clarification, I took a CODEL throughout the European theater, and upstream from Iraq prior, just prior, as it turned out, although we didn't know it at the time, just prior to our actions in Iraq, and exclusively to meet with guard and reserve folks. And we kicked the commanding officers out of the room, and we had some great and fascinating discussions, but—and I am willing to consider anything, but I never once heard a complaint about that discrepancy in pay. I heard a lot of things about, well, you know, we should have had a little bit more notice to deploy, the—but the major complaint was precisely as you have descried it, you know, we just want to be treated the same when we are here, or there, or wherever they are. And in twice in Iraq, once in Afghanistan, I didn't hear that, but they want equitable treatment. These initiatives are out of the goodness of the heart of a lot of Members of Congress, and good people, and maybe they are right. I just wanted to provide you the opportunity to respond to those concerns, and to set out an important part of the record so we can discuss it meaningfully.
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But this is not something the troops are generating, the reserve component is generating. It is something that we in Congress, in our immense compassion, are at least discussing. So, with that, thank you, gentlemen, and Dr. Snyder, I know, has some followup questions.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a followup here on this issue, because this is one that members do talk a lot about. And I understand the issue that if somebody works two days a month at a job versus the person who works full-time, they ought to be paid for the two days a month of the job, and it works out that way, but we have some, like in foreign languages. I mean, in both the active and reserve forces, we have Farsi speakers, right? Now, don't they—if they have proficiency in a language, they get paid the foreign language bonus, do they not? Even if their job, day in day out, involves nothing involved in Farsi.
Now, that seems to me to be kind of a gray area there, that the person is in the Army Reserves, sitting at home, doing whatever his regular job is, then going for his weekend a month, but is available, at a moment's notice, to go speak Farsi somewhere and be activated, and may have to work at keeping up his Farsi skills, even though that is not part of his regular job in the military. The active person is being paid appropriate for whatever they are doing, if they are a pilot or whatever, but Farsi is not part of their skills, and yet we pay—the amounts are different, even though we expect them both to have their skills current and be proficient 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Is that a gray area, or am I overstating the—that that is different than the other examples you used?
Secretary ABELL. That is an interesting area, sir, and we just forwarded to you, I just signed out to you a week or so ago, a report on reserve compensation, and in there, we talk about the foreign language proficiency pay. It is, today, classified as a special pay, so it falls into that area where a reservist would not get the full month's worth, if you will, but it—in that report, we also said we were willing to look at that, and perhaps a way ahead on foreign language proficiency pay, is to transition it, it may be subtle and bureaucratic, but transition it from a special pay to a bonus, where it could be paid as you might suggest. But we are looking at foreign language proficiency pay in a larger perspective, to say have we got a right, even for the force at large, because I am not sure that it is—that it, today, is right for even the active force, and so——
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Dr. SNYDER. That is a good point.
Secretary ABELL. It is—as we look at foreign language proficiency pay, period, we will look at it from the perspective of both the reserve component and the active component.
Dr. SNYDER. And it is not just a problem with the military, it is a problem throughout the—throughout government. A lot of our agencies don't have the depth or breadth of foreign languages.
Secretary ABELL. That is right.
Dr. SNYDER. I wanted to ask Admiral Hoewing and General Hagenbeck, the Committee's staff heard from folks, I think it was at Walter Reed, that with some of our wounded soldiers, that were interested in, earlier than they received it, were interested in career counseling, in terms of what their options were, even though they were wounded and had some kind of a disability, but what were their opportunities to stay in the military and job changes and so on, and they were frustrated there weren't career counselors out there, and Admiral Hoewing, I know we have a lot of Marines over there now, and you deal with Bethesda. Is that an issue we are addressing? You don't have to go into any detail about it, just——
Admiral HOEWING. I do not believe that is an issue, though it must be, or you wouldn't be asking the question there.
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Dr. SNYDER. The reports we received were from Walter Reed, because at that time, they had—Walter Reed had a lot more——
Admiral HOEWING. We have an engagement process for sailors and I am sure the Marines also, that are in the facilities, and in fact, I can even recall one specific situation during the war, when I went to visit these young folks myself, to make sure that they understood what their chain of command was in order to be able to retain on active duty. We have kept many of our injured sailors, both from the Cole and from OIF, and OEF also, in the service, even with lost limbs and things like that, so we engage them on the spot there in the hospital, and they should be engaged at the unit level also.
General HAGENBECK. Sir, from the Army perspective, we recognize that problem along with some others. We have created an agency inside my staff that is the moniker is Disabled Soldiers Support System, that now is funded, and it takes our most severely disabled soldiers from the time that they are hospitalized until they are reintegrated into the community, that stays connected with them from start to finish. So the career counselors will come earlier, and the mentors that we will have in the receiving communities, we expect, will ease that process that they are faced with.
Dr. SNYDER. And Admiral Hoewing, just one detail question. A couple of weeks ago, you testified before another hearing that the—you were down 600 junior officers below your requirements for naval aviation, or for officers—I assume that that number has not improved in the last two weeks, that you are still 600 junior officers short.
Admiral HOEWING. We were talking about the naval aviator area, what we gave you in that statement, and it was not in this statement——
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Dr. SNYDER. Right.
Admiral HOEWING [continuing]. Was an aggregate—I am sorry, not an aggregate number of naval aviation, but a reflection of during the late 1990's, middle and late 1990's, we drove down the assessions in naval aviation to a point below what we needed to sustain the force, and that created a shortfall of about 600 junior naval aviators. We have some O–4s and above in excess of that requirement, and we ploughed those lieutenant commanders into lieutenant jobs, mostly in production type jobs, in order to balance out the force out there. So that was just a—it has nothing to do with retention. It is, in fact, an underassession from the mid to late 1990's.
Dr. SNYDER. Thank you. Thank you.
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