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Senate OKs Army increase of up to 30K

One day after the Defense Department said it needed a 22,000 increase in the Army to reduce the strain of overseas deployments, the Senate voted 93-1 to allow the Army to increase by up to 30,000 soldiers beginning Oct. 1.

The only vote against the increase came from Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis.

The 30,000-person increase would be temporary, expiring on Sept. 30, 2012, under the amendment to the 2010 defense authorization bill that was crafted by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, the Independent from Connecticut who serves on the Senate Armed Services Committee and has been a long-time advocate of increasing the size of the Army to spread the burden of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Lieberman amendment does not identify how to pay for the extra people, a cost estimated to be in excess of $100,000 per person per year when pay, allowances and support costs are included, but it does give options. For 2010, the extra cost could be covered either by supplemental funding, if the Obama administration requests it, or from reserve funding within the Defense Department. For 2011 and 2012, the amendment assumes that the Defense Department will find a way to pay for the extra soldiers and will include money for the increase in the budget it submits to Congress.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Monday that he wanted a temporary 22,000 increase in the Army, a bump that would result in 569,000 active-duty soldiers. He said the increase would begin immediately, with the Army having additional personnel costs in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. For 2009 and 2010, Gates said he would find money from with the defense budget without seeking additional funding from Congress.

The Lieberman amendment does not require the Army to grow to 577,000, it just gives permission to increase without Defense Department having to seek additional authority if military leaders decide that the 22,000 additional soldiers ordered up by Gates are not enough.

This is not a new idea. Even before Tuesday’s Senate vote, the House and Senate armed services committees had endorsed a 30,000 increase in the number of active-duty soldiers. However, because they didn’t have money to cover the added costs, the increase was going to take effect in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, a one-year lag that would have forced the Army to find a way of paying for the extra troops.

This is not the final word from Congress. Lieberman’s amendment is attached to S 1390, the 2010 defense authorization act that sets military policy. Because the House did not include a similar provision in its bill, congressional negotiators will have to decide whether it remains or is modified. A separate defense appropriations bill, providing money for authorized programs, has just started taking shape in Congress. If funding is provided in that bill for extra troops, the heat would be off the Defense Department to divert money from other programs to cover the increase in soldiers.

Work on the defense authorization and appropriations bills is likely to extend into fall.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, one of the co-sponsors of the Lieberman amendment, said her vote has as much to do with helping National Guard and reserve troops as it does in helping active-duty soldiers.

“We are wearing out the National Guard and reserve forces through constant deployments,” she said. “Our Guardsmen and reservists are doing a great job, but they are being stretched to the point of breaking because we don’t have enough active duty forces.”

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