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National Guard chief makes his budget case
As the Pentagon contemplates big changes amid budget cuts of $350 billion and the drawdown in Iraq, National Guard Chief Gen. Craig McKinley doesn’t want the Guard to get left behind.
McKinley said Friday that the Guard’s role in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has made its forces more integrated with the Army and Air Force in the past decade, and that investment should not be squandered.
“We are tightly wound with our services. Therefore we need to be used,” the Guard chief said at a panel hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “That’s our argument here. Keep us operational, keep us balanced, don’t take the Guard in our case down to a point where we’re unusable again.”
The Pentagon is currently examining how it can cut at least $350 billion from its budget — and potentially $500 billion more from sequestration — which could have a big impact on all the services.
At the same time, Congress is pushing for the National Guard chief to have a permanent seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a move that’s opposed by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.
Guard members come as a smaller cost because they are part time, but that cost has increased with their tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, McKinley said. He said those in the Pentagon looking at Guard expenses only over the past 10 years are viewing it from a “very small snapshot in time.”
Air Force Secretary Michael Donley has previously said that budget-cutting could force the Air Force to reduce personnel. Some of those trims could hit the Guard, said Lt. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, director of the Air National Guard, who said he’s been told the percentage of Air Force troops will likely be shifting from the Guard to active-duty forces.
McKinley said it was still too soon to talk specific numbers for force reductions with so much still up in the air from with the budget.
