National Guard advocates press for more recruits

The advocacy group for the Army National Guard is pressing Congress to allow the service to recruit more citizen soldiers next year.

The Army National Guard is already riding an unprecedented recruitment success, and the push by the National Guard Association of the United States (NGAUS) comes as the active Army and Marine Corps, under pressure to attract more recruits, have been under fire for making exceptions to allow recruits with criminal records to enter service.

{mosads}By contrast, because of a handful of successful initiatives, the Army National Guard — which hit bottom in recruitment almost three years ago — has had no trouble signing up members. Guard officials say they’ve had to give exceptions to less than 4 percent of recruits who had blemished pasts.

For 2009, the Army Guard is capped at 352,600 people, but NGAUS, which represents all National Guard forces, is pushing for Congress to authorize the service to have 360,000 people next year in the defense authorization bill.

The Guard is allowed by law to surpass its ceiling by 3 percent, but would have to find offsets to pay for the additional people. If Congress raises the authorization, it would give the Guard funding for the additional troops.

This year, the Guard will receive funding for 351,111 people. With the 3 percent leeway, it has recruited and paid for 358,193 — seven people away from what the Guard was initially supposed to have in fiscal 2013, according to Col. Mike Jones, chief of Army Guard recruiting and retention.

National Guard officials, including the head of the National Guard Bureau, Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, support seeing larger numbers for the Guard and have expressed confidence that the service’s recruiting machine could keep churning out new members for a prolonged period. At the same time, they support the president’s budget proposal for fiscal 2009 and stop short of saying for how many more recruits they want authorization.

So far, the Guard has found a way to pay for the additional recruits, partly through supplemental spending bills for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But it is getting to the point where the Army Guard will need Congress to authorize the additional recruits in order for them to be funded, according to several sources.

Recruiting trends support higher Guard numbers, according to John Goheen, NGAUS’s spokesman. “We [the Guard] are building at a time when the other services are not having a great time,” he added. “We are not only getting quantity but also quality.”  

But NGAUS could face an uphill battle on Capitol Hill. It must compete for precious funds with the Pentagon, which is fighting for more money not only to sustain forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also to repair war-torn equipment and to buy new weapons systems. The active Army might also oppose additional funds for the Guard, which could come from its own coffers.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the co-chairman of the National Guard Caucus, said he would favor raising the authorized cap for the Guard, but stressed that the Guard should first use funds to replenish its equipment. The Guard has struggled to respond to domestic needs in the face of prolonged overseas deployments.

NGAUS is also lobbying Congress to help the Guard rely less on emergency funding, the source of much of its personnel growth and new equipment. That has led to worries that once the supplementals dry up, recruiting and equipping initiatives may not receive the same level of commitment.

Guard officials and supporters argue that larger numbers could boost readiness. Larger numbers would also allow Guard members to spend one year deployed and five at home — a goal Defense Secretary Robert Gates outlined shortly after he took office.

Blum, foreseeing increased reliance on the Guard in the U.S. and on international missions, told The Hill last year that it would be “logical to grow the Guard and the Reserves larger than they are today.”  

Blum also said that increasing the Guard’s size by 8,000 over the next several years is too conservative. “I am very confident that we can grow larger than 8,000 people if we were allowed to and resourced to,” he said.

Several recruiting programs have led to the Guard’s successes, including the so-called Guard Recruiting Assistance Program, which relies on volunteers to sign up as recruiting assistants and enlist people from their own communities.

These recruiting assistants receive bonuses of up to $2,000.

“People work in the community looking for people of quality,” said Jones. “This is social networking. We call it the offline MySpace.” The best type of advertising is getting to know a soldier and hearing his or her stories about the Guard, he added.

The Guard has also instituted a recruit sustainment program that allows recruits to train with their own local peer groups before they are shipped out to basic training, Jones said.

Another factor has been the so-called GED academy, which helps those who did not finish high school earn general equivalency diplomas, as long as the applicant does not have a criminal record. It has been so successful in increasing recruitment, the Army is contemplating opening its own academy.

Because the Guard has been so successful in enlisting people across the country, the Army and the Guard kick-started another program in which the Guard recruits people who first serve in the active Army and then transition into the Guard.

Recruits get bonuses in the program of $40,000 for four years of active duty; $30,000 for three years; and $20,000 for two and a half years. If the soldiers choose to stay in the Guard after their active Army time is up, they receive another $20,000.