Hearing of the House Government Reform Committee - Transforming the National Guard: Resourcing for Readiness Panel I

Federal News Service

April 29, 2004 Thursday

HEADLINE: HEARING OF THE HOUSE GOVERNMENT REFORM COMMITTEE SUBJECT: TRANSFORMING THE NATIONAL GUARD: RESOURCING FOR READINESS

CHAIRED BY: REPRESENTATIVE TOM DAVIS (R-VA)

WITNESS PANEL I:

GEORGE E. PATAKI, GOVERNOR, STATE OF NEW YORK

REP. TOM LANTOS (D-CA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm particularly delighted to welcome my good friend, Governor Pataki, which is the proper pronunciation of his name, for all of my colleagues, every single Hungarian word is accented on the first syllable, and it's Pataki. And I am particularly pleased that he's testifying today because his state is a perfect illustration of the wisdom of the legislation I introduced, namely preventing National Guardsmen and Guardswomen from incurring severe financial losses and their families incurring severe financial hardships as they are activated.

The state of New York provides the differential between the military pay and the former civilian pay, and I want to commend the governor for his state's action along these lines, and when it comes time to question him I will ask him what the cost of this has been for the state of New York, whether it has entailed additional appropriation and what in his judgment has been the impact on morale. New York State is leading by giving us an example of how to handle this problem and its long overdue that the administration drop its opposition to what is a commonsense singularly non-partisan approach to a severe issue of recruitment and retention. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

REP. SHAYS: Mr. Lantos, you can now question Mr. Pataki.

REP. LANTOS: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Governor, I again want to commend you for your leadership on this whole complex issue. But I'd like to zero in on the legislation I introduced almost a year ago. And I must admit that I find it very disturbing when I don't understand that source of the opposition or the logic behind the opposition. I know you will be able to help me. In New York State, you recognize the obvious that at a time of war, we must have if not equality of sacrifice because we cannot attain that, but we must have an attempt at sharing sacrifice. And to place on the families of activated National Guard's people horrendous financial burden, financial strains of major proportions. People losing their homes because they cannot pay their mortgage. Children discontinuing their college education because the parents can't pay tuition.

It makes eminently good sense not to impose on an activated National Guardsman or woman an additional financial burden. Now, in New York, you're doing this, and I want to congratulate you. May I ask your general judgment about the philosophy behind my legislation, namely preventing financial losses for people who are already called upon to make a major personal sacrifice?

GOV. PATAKI: Well, Congressman, of course I agree with the need that we have, not just at the state level but at the federal level, to understand the economic impact this has on a citizen soldier who has been activated. It's very different from a career professional military person who understands the pay scale and accepts that pay scale as part of their career determination. A citizen-soldier will too often see their income dramatically reduce. Now how you deal with that, I think you can do it on many different fronts, and in fact Congress first began to respond to that concern with the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act that was passed back during World War II.

But obviously circumstances have changed dramatically since World War II, so I think there are a number of different approaches. One is to provide additional benefit in the form of salary enhancement or making up the gap when someone suffers a significant diminution of earnings. Another is to make sure that we do cap interest rates. And I know the Soldiers and Sailors Relief Act does that at 6 percent.

Given historically low interest rates now, perhaps that could be lowered even more.

Our plan not only provides to make up that salary differential, but as an example if a young man or young woman goes out and leases an SUV that they use and then they get called to active duty, we allow them to cancel that lease so that they don't have any penalty at all. If they're enrolled in school and they're activated, we require that school to give them tuition back and their fees back for the portion of the semester they were there and keep that slot open so when they come back they know it exists. So there are a whole gamut of benefits, including salary enhancement that we are looking to do at the state level, and I think it is appropriate to do at the federal level as well.

Congressman, just one point though, and this is something where I'm commenting from afar, because I'm not a part of the federal military or chain of command. But one of the important things we cannot do is have a differential among those in the Guard so that people are reluctant to call up a particular unit because of the additional cost factor if that skill set is needed. So I don't know if that is in fact a relevant consideration as your legislation and others is considered, but it's just something that we have to be able to call upon, the people we need with the skills they need without concern to the economic cost to the country. We have to be concerned about the economic impact on those soldiers and sailors and their families.

REP. LANTOS: Governor, if I may pursue this for one more moment. Obviously we all know that we face serious problems of reenlistment, retention, enlistment given the new nature of the global struggle we are engaged in. In view of that fact do you view the New York program as a success?

GOV. PATAKI: The New York program is a success. As I indicated earlier, one of the first things we did well before September 11th is we created a program where if you enlist in the National Guard you get free tuition at our state or city universities, or an equivalent in a private or parochial, and that had a very dramatic impact on recruitment. Now we have seen since September 11th and since the operations overseas recruitment holding steady and in fact a little bit increased over the last couple of months. We are concerned about retention as thousands of our National Guard troops come back, it's too soon to tell.

But one significant enhancement of the benefit package for our National Guard troops that we believe would help with both recruitment and retention would be to provide health benefits to those who enlist in the National Guard. It's something that they would be able to access under the federal program and it would have an enormous help to both encourage the enlistment in the first place and the retention of those who are coming back.

REP. LANTOS: I want to thank you, Governor, I want to commend you for your achievement.

GOV. PATAKI: Thank you very much, Congressman.

REP. SHAYS: Thank you.

Mr. McHugh?

REP. McHUGH: Thank you very much.

Again, Governor, welcome. Always good to see you.

GOV. PATAKI: Thank you.

REP. McHUGH: By the way, I was just talking to Senator Kohl and he sends his best. I don't know which way his train is headed today, but that's another issue. My friend from California brings up a serious consideration and from my other perspective of the chairman of the Personnel Subcommittee on Armed Services, I commend him for his concern and for his leadership on it. I was pleased to hear your response, Governor, and that the program you've initiated that I tried to acknowledge and praise in my opening comments and that obviously I'm very familiar with, and again, God bless you for that insight and that leadership.

But as I think your response indicated, there is a whole range of things that can and probably should be done in terms of benefit packages for the Guard and the Reserve component in general that can show both our appreciation and also our concern about retention and recruitment and you have, as my friend from California suggested, had been a national leader on that. Mr. Lantos mentioned the administration's opposition, and I think technically that's true but I think it's important just to note for the record that the military services oppose that initiative as well, because of their concern about the morale impact of placing two service members in this new era, one active, the other Guard or Reserve where they're doing the same job and taking the same bullets and in the same foxhole and being paid different levels.

REP. LANTOS: Will my friend yield for a second?

REP. McHUGH: I'll yield in just a moment.

I'm not sure that concern is justified. There have been attempts in the past to try to provide pay differentials that have failed, an insurance policy that was run through Gulf War One. We are aggressively searching for a way in which we can help that one third, in fact about one third of the Guard and Reserve that are deployed actually lose money. About a third stay the same and that the other third actually makes money because it is a legitimate point. But it has proven to be far more complex here at the congressional level and at the Washington level than just passing a bill to mandate it and we are trying to work through that.

And with that, I'd be happy to yield to my friend from California.

REP. LANTOS: I will just make one quick point and thank my good friend for yielding. I find a profound inconsistence in the administration's opposition while at the same time the administration is praising private employers for maintaining salary level of activated people. But they can't have it both ways. They can't praise a company for doing exactly what my legislation is calling for, while opposing the legislation. This is profoundly inconsistent --

REP. McHUGH: I'm reclaiming my time.

REP. LANTOS: I thank my friend.