Inside the Pentagon - 7/16/2009
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LIEBERMAN PROPOSES ADDING 30,000 ARMY TROOPS IN FY-10
A senator this week took steps to grow the Army sooner, offering an amendment to the fiscal year 2010 defense authorization bill that would provide the authority to add 30,000 troops in FY-10.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-CT), chairman of the Senate Armed Services airland subcommittee, has long backed increasing the size of the service. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s version of the FY-10 bill provides a boost of 30,000 soldiers “above 2010 levels during fiscal years 2011 and 2012 if sufficient funding is requested in the budgets for those fiscal years,” according to an attached report.
But on July 14, Lieberman offered an amendment that would extend to FY-10 “an authority that the committee mark . . . already provides for 2011 and 2012,” his office said in a statement.
“Authorizing additional personnel is a critical first step toward making sure that our military leaders can execute their strategy while also reducing the heavy strain on our soldiers and their families,” Lieberman said in the statement.
The Military Officers Association of America backed the amendment, noting in a statement released the same day that thousands of troops are “on their third or fourth combat tour in seven years, and defense leaders see a decade of conflict ahead.”
In the statement, Navy Vice Adm. Norb Ryan Jr., president of the organization, said funding 30,000 more soldiers now is “America’s greatest procurement need.”
Last week, Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the Pentagon would find a way to pay for the proposed temporary increase in FY-11 and FY-12, as sister publication Inside the Army reported.
Noting that the Army will face significant stress in 2010 and 2011, he said resourcing for additional troops “is going to be a challenge but we believe . . . we’ll find that money, if it’s necessary to find it internally, to do that.”
“We’d like the help, probably, but again, we’ve got to make a decision inside the department,” Cartwright continued. “We’ve got to work that through. But the case for the additional forces is clearly there.” -- Marjorie Censer