Ted Stevens

Mr. STEVENS

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, the Senator from West Virginia has touched on a subject that many of us believe should be explored. I think in order to look at it, we have to look at a little bit of history. That history, as far as the Department of Defense is concerned, is not too pleasant. In the Clinton administration, I remember distinctly being down at the White House when the President showed us his plan for defense expenditures. He showed us a chart that showed a constant decline in defense expenditures. At the end of 6 or 7 years, it started to go back up. He was going to use that money to reorder priorities of the country. That was his plan, and that is what he executed. As a consequence, the military people of this country had to figure out how to defend the country. Many of us who worked in matters relating to defense here in the Congress worked with them. The concept that was developed by the Defense Department and approved by Congress was the total force concept. The total force is those who are regularly in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines. And it was augmented by the National Guard and by the Reserve. When we deploy forces now overseas, almost every unit of the regular military has, along with it, portions of its personnel who come from the Guard or Reserve. They are already identified before deployments take place. This is the total force going out into these operations. This happened during the Clinton administration in Bosnia, and it happened in Kosovo. There were National Guard as well as Reserves deployed with the regular units. The concept of deployment is one that people in the services understand. The problem the Senator from West Virginia has correctly identified is the repeated deployments that have taken place. When we think about it, starting in Haiti, starting in Bosnia and in Kosovo, we had a series of deployments, and then in this administration in Afghanistan and Iraq. Those have all taken place in a continuum of a lifetime of the current force. It is an evolving force. People enter and others leave. But we are still dealing with a total force. You are not dealing with the kind of forces that were in place when I first came to the Senate or when we served in in World War II. There were massive divisions called up. They had a cadre of permanent people in the U.S. Army. Back then, we were in the Army of the United States. That was the draftee portion that was added to the Army. Each section of the military had that in days gone by. But they were temporary people. They were drafted. They were not involved in a citizen-soldier-citizen military concept. When we evolved into this picture that we are in right now, we developed recruiting techniques to recruit people. The Senator from West Virginia mentions the police of West Virginia. I am sure the same thing happens in almost every State in the Union. The police are encouraged to join the National Guard and the Reserve so they can be part of the military police forces as they are deployed. They may even have expertise that they got in the military services before they became policemen. And they agreed to come back and fulfill that same expertise as a member of the service when their unit was deployed. The Reserve and Guard units are called up because they have expertise in particular areas. They are part of a function that is included in the total force. The problem isn't the duration of the deployment; it is the frequency of the deployments, as far as I am concerned. The Senator from Hawaii will recall that he and I went to Prince Sultan several years ago and talked to the pilots who were not reenlisting. This was occurring during the Clinton administration. They were not reenlisting because they had been deployed to Italy; they had been deployed to Bosnia; they had been deployed to fly what we call the ``continuous air patrol''--the cap over Iraq. Once they finished the cap over Iraq, they were back in Bosnia again or they were deployed to do some special activities in the Korean area. Several times when forces were built up as tensions increased, we deployed some forces. They were brought back later. But it wasn't the duration of any one of the deployments, in my judgment; it was the frequency of several deployments. I remember talking to one pilot who was not going to reenlist because he had been away from his family I think 10 months out of the year. This was something that was just not contemplated by the total force, whether they were Regular or Guard or Reserve. It is not just the Guard and Reserve. It is the total force in terms of the number of deployments and the length and duration of the rotations that are taking place. Those I think have to be studied, and they have to be studied very carefully to determine where we are going. Unfortunately, I must disagree with my friend from West Virginia. If we followed his suggestion, we would put down just a blanket rule concerning the time of the deployment period or the number of deployments in any 360-day period. And this would be not more than one. President Clinton could not have fought in Bosnia and Kosovo and maintained the blockade of Iraq, as he did as Commander in Chief, under this kind of a law. In fact, I do not think any Commander in Chief could command our total force with that kind of a law. But what we have to look at is the number of times that you are deployed in any one period of your service. There are people who still enlist for a period of time. If they enlist in the Guard or the Reserve or the regular forces, I think we ought to assure them, if they are in each category, there ought to be a different standard. In the regular services, those are 365-day-a-year deployments, period. This concept of applying this policy only to the Reserve component, I think--and I assume by that the Senator includes the National Guard--is not proper, in my judgment. We have to look at the total force and say, if you are a part of that force, this is what will apply to you. I think there should be some distinctions between the regular services and the Guard and the Reserve so that a person could make a choice based on his or her circumstance as to how often and for what duration deployments might take place. We developed, in World War II, a concept of points. Again, my friend from Hawaii and I probably are of the few people in the Senate who can remember that. But you got points for the number of months you were deployed overseas. You might have been deployed to France or Italy or England but you built up points. As you reached the zenith on points, you were eligible then to be rotated back home, back to the continental U.S. That system is almost implied in what the Senator is raising because if you have been deployed more than once in a 360-day period, you could not go again, I take it, until that period was exhausted. But the concept of when a person should be entitled to be returned to the continental U.S., and how many times they can be deployed overseas in any one--we used to call them ``hitches''--enlistment period I think has to be explored. I have just reviewed this, and I want to find a way to raise this so the Senate will understand the issues as we see them with regard to this policy. We need to establish a review by people who are decidedly interested in addressing the problems that Senator Byrd has outlined to give us some judgment, as quickly as possible, on what we should do. One of the basic questions, in my mind, is, should it be a law, or should we mandate there be regulations issued that encompass certain criteria that must be met by those regulations, or should we direct the Commander in Chief to issue an Executive order? There are several ways this could be changed. I take it one of the questions that should be addressed in this amendment, too, is the question of whether the rules should be the same during a period such as we are in now--this is a period of engagement overseas, at the direction of the President, approved by the Congress, by the way, but it is not in response to a declaration of war. I think once we get into a period of total war, as in terms of a declaration of war passed by Congress, then all bets are off. In fact, that triggers, once again, if that happens, as I understand the law, the draft again. We go into entirely different circumstances in terms of manpower and encouraging people to come. We will have to address that sometime. Just parenthetically, I remember offering the amendment, once in my youth, on the floor, to extend the draft to cover women. Maybe the Senators do not remember that but I did, and it was defeated. We thought it would be defeated but we then went ahead to defeat the draft. We eliminated the draft. Once we agreed we would not draft women, we eliminated the discrimination in being able to draft men. I think, should we ever get into total war again, God forbid, we will have to look into the concept of a draft and how we execute it. But, very clearly, what we are talking about now, being deployed for more than one 360-day period--I would have been able to come back from China very quickly if we only had 360 days. There were many people who served overseas for more than 2 to 3 years during World War II. By the way, they did not build up the points that were necessary to come home because those points primarily arose, as I recall, in periods of combat--at least you got greater credit while you were in combat. I never had to worry about points, Mr. President. I enjoyed what I was doing, and maybe I didn't want to quit flying, so I was very pleased to stay where I was. What we are trying to do is develop a policy that comprehensively examines the issue of overseas deployments and analyzes any resulting personnel readiness or operation tempo strains on the Active Guard and Reserve Forces, and to apply this concept to the total force. We want to examine overseas rotation policies and practices and determine how those policies--for the whole force--impact military readiness, individual and unit training, the quality of life for military service members and their families, their dependents, the retention of career and noncareer military service members, and the impact on reenlistments of the policies that are pursued. We want to specifically get some recommendations on ways to reduce the burden of overseas military deployments while maintaining military readiness, overseas presence, and supporting the national military strategy and the ability to respond to the President's orders as Commander in Chief. I particularly think we ought to find some way to recognize that there has to be times when the Commander in Chief has the right to obtain the forces that he and his military advisers believe are necessary to maintain our national defense. Again, parenthetically, I am reading a novel now. I believe I told Senator Byrd and others about it. It is about the Revolutionary War. During that period, the Washington Army was a national army but there still was not a national government and they did not have permanent enlistments. They had enlistments for periods of days or weeks or months. Often Washington found he did not have the forces in one week that he had the week before, and he had to wait until he was augmented by further forces that came to him from the State militias. What are the State militias today? They are the National Guards. Our history of militias in the United States has given us the National Guards. This amendment offered by Senator Byrd really applies to the National Guard, too. The National Guard has another commander in chief, unless they are, in fact, mobilized by the President; and that is the Governor of each State. It is only when they are mobilized that they would come under this proposal of Senator Byrd. What I am saying is, we have many problems out there that have now been perceived because of the multiple deployments of our forces in the last 10 to 12 years. One of them became apparent to me as I talked to military people in my home State of Alaska; that is, we now have, in many instances, couples who are both in the military. Sometimes they are actually in different units, at different bases, but they are married and they have families. We have the problem of units being deployed and finding that both parents might be deployed at the same time, with minor children involved. That is something that ought to be looked at. We ought to have some limits on overseas deployment, period. Now, for instance, I believe about half of our marines today are in Okinawa. They are stationed there almost permanently. The Marines have fewer married people, I understand, but they do have some problems with regard to family deployments, and I think that concept ought to be looked at. We ought to look at the question of unaccompanied tours, the reverse side of that. How long should the marines or any of these individuals be stationed overseas when they are not accompanied by their spouse or their families? I distinctly remember the time Senator Hollings and I were asked to go to Europe by Senator Stennis. We went to study a problem that was coming because in those days, this is back in the 1970s, we had unaccompanied tours in terms of our basic force assigned to the protection of Europe and NATO. When these young people got a leave, they came home. They got married. And pretty soon the wives and younger children would follow the father, and they were living in these really sad circumstances. Senator Hollings and I went to what we called a walkup, cold-water flat in Germany, where a young woman and her children were living. They had one little burner, and they had cold water. This young woman had to care for those children, and the husband was not allowed any funds for that deployment because he was unaccompanied. They had to literally live off the local economy and somehow survive. I have to tell you, these young people, who were then draftees still going to Germany, weren't very well paid at all. They had a tough life. I still give much credit to Senator John Stennis for what he did for the military people because we followed through on every single issue he raised. And one by one we tried to solve the question of the quality of life of these young people. We increased the rotation with families. We increased the allowances for housing and various other quality-of- life items. Senator Stennis rightly has been credited as one of those who brought about a great deal of that change. This is another change, however. This is a change of a rapid number of deployments on various issues where we have been involved--Somalia, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. They all happened during our watch. And in many instances they involved the same people. I congratulate Senator Byrd for raising the issue, but I respectfully say his amendment is not the way to do it. I didn't see the Senator's amendment until just a few minutes ago. I am drafting an amendment which I will offer to the Senator's amendment. There is a great deal of interest in what is going on. I have just been notified that the Enlisted Association of the National Guard, the Reserve Officers Association, and the National Guard association has asked me to oppose the Senator's amendment. We believe Senator Byrd has good intentions but that the way this is done, if this would become law, would be too abrupt and would not really alleviate the pressures. We believe there should be much more consideration going into how these limitations on deployment will be brought about. We particularly do not want to take the risk that passing a very strict limitation on either the number of deployments or the time for the deployments would have on our national security. We are about ready to enter into another deployment. We all know the Commander in Chief has decided that some of our forces will go to Liberia. This again is going to raise the issue. But we have tried to deal with some of these issues by increasing compensation, by doing the things we think we should do to ease the burden on National Guard and Reserve personnel when they serve and to increase the amount they get towards credit for retirement and for promotion and for an increase in eligibility for pay. I do think we are dealing with something that everyone is talking about restructuring and everybody is talking about revamping the policies. Secretary Rumsfeld has told us he intends to issue a draft of a plan for a sweeping restructuring of the 900,000 National Guard and Reserve forces. He wants to deal with the question in a way that would bring about a reduction in the need for calling up large numbers of reservists in a war and do away with the concept in some instances. He considered it to be, according to the clipping I have just received, a matter of utmost urgency. I believe it is of utmost urgency, too. I would like the opportunity to review the plans the Secretary wants to put into effect. I think if they are plans that would be counter to the goals we currently are trying to achieve, we should find a way to work together. The Secretary issued a statement on July 9. I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record.

Mr. STEVENS. Yes.

Mr. STEVENS. Under the total force concept, there could be National Guardsmen and Reserve in any of the units deployed overseas.

Mr. STEVENS. I do not know the current component, Mr. President, but we did see some reservists and Guard people in Kosovo when we were there. We visited Fort Bonnsteel. We saw them in Bosnia, and we saw them in Afghanistan. I am specifically told the National Guard currently has a mission in Bosnia.

Mr. STEVENS. Currently, I believe there is a 6-month deployment limit, but they do not charge against that deployment period the time necessary to get them ready to go over, or the time they use in demobilization when they get back.

Mr. STEVENS. That is my understanding.

Mr. STEVENS. They are. I just read that law. They are subject to the same law. I am told the standard rotation period is 180 days. Those days do not include any preparation or recovery time. The units are typically mobilized for 230 days or more to complete the 180-day requirement, but it applies to all forces. It does apply to our forces in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kosovo--they are all subject to coming back after 180 days.

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator used the word ``redeployment,'' which is another matter. Deployment is limited to 180 days. There is currently no limit on the number of deployments, as I understand it. The problem that I and the Senator from Hawaii discussed with various members of the armed services Regular Guard and Reserve has been the problem of successive deployments. Active duty tours are limited to 180 days under most circumstances when they are not considered to be a home station, such as Korea and Okinawa. For the deployment into these areas, as I understand it, like the Balkans, Afghanistan, or Iraq, the limitation on the deployment is 180 days, but there is no limitation on the number of rotations that one could take to another place overseas when they are brought back.

Mr. STEVENS. That is correct, as an amendment to the Byrd amendment.

Mr. STEVENS. That is my intention.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. STEVENS. The money to pay the salaries for everyone in Iraq is in this bill. The money to pay for operations is in this bill. The problem is the special money for the deployment costs were in the supplemental which we already passed. There was more than was necessary. We have already taken $3 billion out of that. They are operating on what is left. We appropriated $60-plus billion before. Let me assure the Senator that there is money in this bill for Iraq. There is money to pay the salaries and support for the military personnel. Some 60 percent of the money in this bill is support for them. It is there. No matter where they are in the world, they are paid from money in this bill.

Mr. STEVENS. No.

Mr. STEVENS. The Senator is correct in many ways. The difficulty is the current practice is 180 days but none of these people, to my knowledge, have been over there 180 days yet. This operation has not been ongoing for 180 days. There may, however, be people deployed previously in this current timeframe who were deployed to one place, brought home, and then deployed again in the same year. That is true. That is what the Secretary of Defense has said he is trying to address. That is what this commission is trying to address, some way to provide some guidelines so members of the Active-Duty and Reserve components can determine how long they will be deployed away from their homes in any period.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I do agree to a great extent with the Senator from West Virginia, except that I reiterate I am proud to defend this administration. This administration asked for the money, told us what it was for. As a matter of fact, in one instance, the President asked for $10 billion for the global war on terrorism as a contingency fund and, together with the Senator from West Virginia, I helped deny that request. The Congress asked that the administration define the costs and contingencies, and they did. And that money was included in the big supplemental we passed for defense. We asked for it and received the statement of what the money was to be spent for. We asked them to tell us what they were going to spend the money on in Iraq. It was detailed. It was in the fund that was given to them. Again, I defend this administration because, to their credit, they agreed we have rescinded in this bill $3.1 billion of that supplemental we gave to the Department and took the money back and put it for other functions in the Department. Now, the last administration would have taken that money and put it there, anyway. They agreed we should take it back, and now we are going through the process of reappropriating the same money in this bill for 2004 because it is not going to be used according to what they told us they were going to use it for in terms of the Iraq supplemental. But, Mr. President, a friend in the House, watching this event, has sent to me a statement that was made in the House Armed Services Committee on April 3 of this year by Sergeant First Class Steven Davis of the U.S. Army Reserve. I think it is significant to have this comment at this time, and I am pleased that my friends are listening. I am going to read the statement word for word. Sergeant First Class Steven Davis said: Mr. Chairman, members of this distinguished subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today and for allowing me to be a participant in this panel. My name is Sergeant First Class Steven Davis and I am a Military Policeman in the Army Reserve. I have been serving in the United States Army for 15 years, seven of which have been in the Army Reserve. I am assigned to the Military Police Port Security Detachment in Pocahontas, Iowa. I have been mobilized once since I have been in the Army Reserve. I was mobilized on September 23, 2001, for Operation Noble Eagle, and I served one year state side in North Carolina. In my experience, with both the regular Army and the Army Reserve, I believe that the two are very much integrated. I had positive contacts with reserve soldiers when I was on active duty, and I have also had positive contact with the active Army since I have been a reserve soldier. Most recently during our deployment to Sunny Point, North Carolina, we were directly assigned to the 597th Transportation Group. From the moment we arrived, I felt as though we belonged there. I remember during a welcome meeting, COL Heiter, the Commander of the 597th, made it very clear to everyone in the room that the members of my unit would be treated as any other soldier at Sunny Point. The Command emphasis set the tone for our one-year star. Our forces integrated flawlessly with the existing Department of Defense forces, which is what we were trained to do. We were able to work together as a cohesive team, and everyone's moral was high. As for the question, did the recent deployment change or affect the reservist's intention to continue to serve. I believe the deployment made our unit stronger and more willing. From month to month we go ask ourselves, are we really needed?? Why are we doing this? Then September 11th came and all our questions were answered. Yes, we were needed, and yes, we were important. On September 12, 2001, we had 24 soldiers, myself included, volunteer to go on a security mission to an unknown place. The 24 volunteers left for Beaumont, Texas, on September 13th, 2001. Ten days later, on September 23rd, the remainder of our unit was mobilized and sent to North Carolina, where we spent our tour of duty. When our year was up, and we all got the word that we were going home, we were told the New York unit was going to take our place, but that they did not have enough people. Twenty-two soldiers from my unit volunteered to stay with them, not for 3 or 6 months, but for another year. Some of the soldiers were married and some were college students. Why did they stay when they did not have to? I would say it was because they knew they had a job to do, and they weren't going to leave until it was finished. The one problem that we encountered during our deployment was medical benefits. The Army did a great job of providing the coverage, and teaching the soldiers how to use the coverage. However, our family members did not have the advantage of having a representative available to inform them. This created many headaches for the soldiers, who would try to trouble shoot the problems long distance. I believe a local representative, available for family members would have been very helpful and would have saved the soldiers a lot of time on the telephone. I read that because it is indicative of the feeling of our young people. We talked at one of our hearings to the Guard and Reserve members, and we found that as the deployments increased, enlistments increased; and as deployments increased, reenlistments increased. We are having complaints from some people who believe they should have come home sooner, but none have been over there a year yet. None of them have been over there 6 months yet. Even under the current, existing law, the Senator's amendment will not affect them. Well, I am told some in Kuwait have been there 6 months by now, and they should be rotating home. But, as a practical matter, the existing law provides for the deployment limitation, the existing regulations and practice for rotation in deployment every 180 days. However, again, I come back and ask my friend from West Virginia to support us in this effort to have this reviewed. I hope the Senator has read the composition of the commission we would like to create: people appointed by the President, people appointed by the leaders of the two bodies. I do believe an 11-member commission is sufficient. I envision that they would call on former Secretaries of Defense and their assistants, former commanding officers, generals, and members of the Guard and Reserve from the enlisted area. So we would have a representative group to give us their advice. Respectfully, I think we need their advice on how to deal with the complex problems of dealing with rotation and deployment limitations in this day of a very complex total force that our military defense units face today. I urge my friend to reflect and let us adopt our amendment and create this commission, and we will be back here in 5 months. That, I think, would be sufficient to deal with this problem. And it will give us a forward-looking concept as far as deployment strategy, rotation strategy, and benefit strategy for members of our Armed Forces.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. STEVENS. Mr. President, I appreciate the advocacy of our colleague from Missouri on the issue of hypersonics, and I know, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, he has been a champion of this issue and raised it several times. I agree with the Senator on hypersonics technology. It is very important for the future of the aerospace industry. Over the next 10 years or more, the U.S. will develop and test a series of ground and flight demonstrators that will be powered by air-breathing rocket or turbine-based engines or ram/scramjets. It is a very interesting technology. I agree with Senator Talent that this technology has the potential to revolutionize our commercial transport industry, space travel, as well as the military capabilities. I look forward to working with the Senator from Missouri on this important issue as the chairman of the Defense Subcommittee and generally. I think it is a very interesting subject.

Ted Stevens

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