The Endangered Volunteer Military

Conflicts that have no end, continuous deployments, endless hours on the job, cuts to benefits, and pay that no longer keeps up with the rate of inflation are forcing many current service members and their families to reconsider serving their country. Threats to future benefits are making potential recruits think twice about joining in the first place.

In the current sequestration environment, our volunteer military is an endangered species - the highly trained and well educated force of today may not exist in a few years' time. Even if sequestration is repealed, many of our active duty, Reserve, and National Guard as well as their family members, fear that the cuts of the last two years will continue to chip away at hard earned pay and benefits, making the choice to serve a more difficult one.

And why should that matter to you, the civilian with no military connections at all?

Isn’t there a social contract, even though it’s not in writing; your kids, your sons, your daughters, individuals will not have to be drafted because others will come forward and do the job voluntarily?

- Senator Lindsey Graham, 28 Jan 2014

Some US citizens would prefer to see a return of the draft. It would mean that the average American would once again have a direct connection to war. But a draft would cost far more than keeping our current volunteer military properly compensated in the first place. Just the training of new draftees would break our budget. And we would constantly be training new soldiers as draftees don't tend to serve beyond their required commitment.

This Thursday, the Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization Commission will publicly release a report to Congress. The report should reflect the input of thousands of military community members. If so, it is likely to express concern that retention and recruitment will be seriously harmed if we actually cut overall compensation and benefits.

What would you pay, if you had to, to prevent your family from being drafted?

- Senator Lindsey Graham, 28 Jan 2014

But many in the military community are afraid that Congress will not be listening or that the report may reflect the misconceived notion of many in the Department of Defense who claim rising personnel costs prevent the DoD from properly training and equipping our troops. We fear that they and Congress believe that low-lying fruit is easier to pick.

We need you to tell Congress to climb that tree and find the high hanging fruit. It's there. Some of it is wrapped in layers of pork, like the Abrams tanks the DoD no longer wants or needs, and some of it is wrapped in contracts so complex we pay out more than we ever budgeted because it's easier than stopping in our tracks, like the beloved F-35.

We need you to be as vocal as if the draft had come back and tapped someone in your own home to go to war. Because without your input, the volunteer military is truly in a lot of trouble.