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For Immediate Release: March 24, 2004

Contact:

Harald Stavenas Angela Sowa (202) 225-2539 McHugh Brynn Barnett (202) 225-4611

OPENING STATEMENT OF CHAIRMAN MCHUGH
Total Force Subcommittee Hearing on Military Personnel Policy, Benefits, and Compensation Overview

Today the Subcommittee will hear testimony concerning a wide variety of military personnel programs and policies.  This overview of the military personnel world ensures that the Subcommittee stays in touch with those 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 leave military service.

Two of the areas that help us gauge how we are doing on compensation and benefits are recruiting and retention.  By any measure, fiscal year 2003 was an excellent year for recruiting and retention, in some cases a record breaking year.  However, if this Subcommittee has learned anything over the last ten years, it is that the only thing you can count on in recruiting and retention is that there is a natural cycle and the environment will change. 

As good as the environment may appear to be today, I worry that improvement in the job market and continued stress on the force will yield a very hostile recruiting and retention environment in the near future.  The questions are: Are we prepared to recognize that we have a problem early in the cycle and are we prepared to respond with the resources that will be needed?

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 the December 31, 2004 expiration on increased levels for both these programs, we need to decide how we are going to proceed.  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 structure compensation and benefits for the reserve components.  The Congress is acutely aware of the new era of high operations tempo within the reserve forces and the effect it is having on reservists and families.  There is considerable pent up energy in the Congress regarding reserve programs and that has yielded many new ideas.  The challenge now is to choose which of these programs will receive the benefit of our limited resources. 

We will be looking for today's witnesses to help us understand and address these and other issues.

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