The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Volunteer Army

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Ever since Congress abolished the draft, four years ago, the Armed Forces have been spending millions of dollars to attract recruits to the all-volunteer services.

(Recruitment posters on video throughout)

MacNEIL: Military service is no longer depicted as a patriotic sacrifice, but a desirable, even exclusive career, with pay and conditions comparable to good civilian jobs. Even the vocabulary has changed. The tough words "Recruiting Center" banished for the more business-like "Army Representative." The trouble is, for all these blandishments, many believe the campaign isn`t working, and a major debate is shaping up on whether we may have to return to the draft. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the debate centers around three main areas, primarily. The number of young Americans who are willing to serve in the military, the mental and physical quality of those who are, and what it`s all costing. One of those most concerned with how it`s panning out after four years is Senator Sam Nunn, Democrat of Georgia. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Senator recently commissioned a major study of the all-volunteer force, and he`s scheduled hearings next week on the issues it raises. Senator, what is your assessment of how well the all-volunteer force is working?

Sen. SAM NUNN: Well, Jim, I`ll have to confess; I`ve been one of those that`s been skeptical from the very beginning. Of course, I wasn`t in the U.S. Senate when the volunteer force was conceived, but it did start in 1973 since I`ve been there. I think there`s some real problems now; I think those problems in the present stage are manageable, but I see more serious problems on the horizons.

LEHRER: All right, let`s go into some of the specifics where you see problems. What about the area of recruitment -- meeting quotas and all of that. Is that a problem? Do you see it as a problem?

NUNN: At the very beginning of the volunteer force, it was a problem for the first year, then the services began to gear up. They spent a lot of money on recruiting; they paid a lot of bonuses; they have done much better. We`re beginning to see now again signs of problems in recruiting. In the fourth quarter 1976, calendar year, the Army was about 6 per cent short of their quotas; the Marine Corps was about 15 per cent. But I think this is only the beginning, because I think they`ve been the most favorable and the most conducive possible circumstances for the volunteer force during its inception, and I think the circumstances now are going to change. For instance, we`ve had very high unemployment during the period that the volunteer force has been implemented -- hopefully, that unemployment rate`s going to go down and the projections are that by 1980 or `81, the youth unemployment, which is a real key in recruiting, will be down about 50 per cent. So that`s just one instance where the circumstances are going to get more difficult.

LEHRER: What about the quality of the recruits now going into the all- volunteer force?

NUNN: Well, I`d have to say, frankly, that there are a great number of highly qualified people and good people going in. I don`t want to cast any disparaging remarks on those people who are in the service now. The Army is beginning to experience more difficult quality problems now; they`re trying to have a certain percentage of high school graduates. The Marine Corps experienced great difficulty about two years ago; then General Wilson took over. He decided if necessary he would sacrifice numbers to make sure they had quality. Now what`s happened is, the numbers have gone down; that`s the 15 per cent we talked about. So every service is different. I would say the most severe problems, though, are not in the active forces; the most severe problems are in the reserve forces.

LEHRER: Do you see this quality in the same way you see the numbers problem? It`s going to get worse, too?

NUNN: I think unemployment will affect that, yes, I do. And then the other factor that I think is important, the numbers of 17 and 18 year olds that was at an all time high about a year ago.

From now until 1992, those numbers are going to decline. So from about 1985 to 19901 you`re going to have to recruit one out of every two qualified males if the volunteer force is going to succeed unless a lot more provisions are made in order to change those requirements.

LEHRER: Thank you, Senator. Robin?

MacNEIL: The all-volunteer force was the unanimous recommendation of the Gates Commission set up by President Nixon. The youngest member of that Commission was Stephen Herbits. He went on to help shape the new volunteer army as a special assistant at the Manpower Affairs Office at the Pentagon. During the last year of the Ford administration, he also served as a special assistant to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Mr. Herbits, do you agree with Senator Nunn`s verdict?

STEPHEN HERBITS: I think the facts are the same, but the interpretation of the results are very different.

MacNEILs Well, how do you interpret them?

HERBITS: The situation for the last four years has been favorable in terms of numbers, has been favorable in terms of the climate, but people tend to forget that the Army and the other services have gone through a virtual revolution in the way they do business and the way they work with their manpower. It hasn`t been totally an easy adjustment. The period ahead with decreasing unemployment which analysis shows is not going to have as big an impact on recruitment as some other things, partially because of the high velocity of in and out of jobs of the 18 to 20 year old group. We also have the situation where the 18 year olds and the size of the pool are going to be shrinking. What I look to is the management inside the military to solve the problems rather than resort to compulsion.

MacNEIL: Could I ask you for a bit of shorthand just-at that point? Your basic belief, then, is that it`s working, the all volunteer forces, and with extra effort inside, they can improve it.

HERBITS: That`s right. It`s working very well. Bernie Rogers, the Chief of Staff of the Army said the other day that in his 34 years of service, he has never seen such a fine group of men coming into the service. We do have some quality things, it gets very technical in explaining it, but in terms of mental category, we have the best group of men in the history of the Army now coming in. In terms of high school graduates, the number is smaller than they would like, but that is not so much an indication of performance on the job, as it is a very gross indication of the number of people who will stay all the way through their term -- through their discipline.

MacNEIL: Mr. Herbits, how do you answer the Senator`s point that in the last quarter of `76, when conditions were generally favorable in the economy for recruitment, the Army was 6 per cent short of its quota, and the Marine Corps, which has always been one of the most popular services, 15 per cent short of its quota?

HERBITS: The end of fiscal year `72 when we had the draft working, this was before it ended, the Army missed its goal for bringing people into the service, with the draft and the volunteer force, by 50 thousand men. What we`re talking about now are 5, 10, 15 thousand figures. We`re taking a snapshot one day out of 365. People tend to forget that the Army is now recruiting on a daily basis to fill certain skills, and if that skill isn`t open that week, that guy can`t get in. He can go into a delayed pool. It`s a very, very sophisticated airline reservation system now. Some people are lost through this system because the job that they want isn`t open that day and they go off and do something else. It didn`t used to be that way. It`s better for the Army; the job skill match is over 90 per cent now. During the draft age it was so bad the government Accounting Office did a study and found out that 25, 26 per cent weren`t in the right jobs. But the point is we`re talking to the margins. Five, six thousand, even 15 per cent is a margin when you look at it on a certain day. If this keeps up over a few years, then we have a problem. I don`t expect it will; there are management adjustments to make. Jim?

MacNEIL: Let`s pursue some of those differences and emphases.

LEHRER: Senator, you heard what Mr. Herbits just said; it`s working very well.

NUNN: Well, what he didn`t say that General Rogers just said the other day, because I was sitting there listening to him, is that he could foresee the possibility -- he didn`t predict -- but he could foresee the possibility of possibly having to go back to the draft. He was made a very frank and candid assessment, and General Rogers is the first military leader that`s come before our committee that has expressed that as a definite possibility in the future. He did brag on the people who are in the services now. And as I said to begin with, I don`t want to cast dispersions on those people who are dedicated, who are doing a good job. But when you talk about problems, I`d like to get Steve`s answer as to what he`s going to do about the 180 thousand people we`re short in the individual ready reserve. These are the fellows that would go in if we had a war. I`d like to get his answer about the 53 thousand we`re short . . .

LEHRER: You`re writing all this down, Mr. Herbits?

NUNN: . . . in the active reserve. The active reserve is now something like 50 thousand people short. The quality problems have gone down in the Army Guard. The quality problems have gone down in the Army Reserve. All of the people will tell you that that they`re dealing with. Now the reserves in a no draft situation with no stand-by draft are all- important. Because they`re part of the total force concept. We don`t have any mechanism by which we could recruit large numbers of people if we had a war.

LEHRER: And the lack of the draft has removed an incentive for people to go in the reserve. Is that right?

NUNN: That`s right. I want to throw out one more challenge to Steve `cause he`d be a good one to answer this -- he`s a very bright fellow on this subject. What would we do if we had a war? If we had to go to a Vietnam level of wart if we had to go from 2 million men now to 3 million men; what would we do? My calculations show that we could not afford it. The incremental cost of a recruit now, if you look at the Army budget for recruiting and look at the extra recruits they`re going to get by the extra money they`re requesting is something like 10 to 12 thousand dollars per recruit. So I say, and I let anybody answer this question, that we have only a peacetime volunteer force. The moment we have to expand that force, we`d have to go back to the draft immediately, and I do not think the young people of this country have been told that in a frank and candid way.

LEHRER: Mr. Herbits, you`re on.

HERBITS: Couldn`t agree more in terms of this being a peacetime force. Since I`ve been watching this issue, which began in January 1967, when it was just a dream in a lot of people`s eyes, no one has referred to in any publication, in any paper, all the way through the Nixon administration, all the way through the hearings of Congress, and all the writing that`s being done, that this volunteer force wouldn`t end when we need it for a war. We have to. I do agree with you that there`s something that we have to remind people; we have to make sure that the young people understand that when we`re back in a mobilization situation, they`re coming, and we`re going to have to take them whether they like it or not. The key, however, is that the draft isn`t the solution to that. If we want to do something compulsory, to make sure they understand that, perhaps we ought to compel the radio stations to announce it once a week. I mean, we don`t draft in order to answer that problem. On the IRR, I agree . . .

LEHRER: What`s IRR?

HERBITS: The Individual Ready Reserve -- the first challenge I got -- is a problem; it`s shrinking. But it`s a paper problem. Back when the draft brought people in for 2 years, there was a 4 year period up to 6 years when a person was generally in the Individual Ready Reserve.

LEHRER: After they finished their active service.

HERBITS: After they finished the 2 years they had 4 years more under an obligations 6 years. The military believed that this 4 year period, this individual was of a higher priority than a person untrained. He had some training; he had 2 years of training. Right now people are coming in for 3, 4, 6 years. That means the remain . .

LEHRER: Does the man have a reserve commitment -- somebody who volunteers for the all-volunteer force?

HERBITS: Yes, that`s right. Still up to 6 years, people sign up for 6 years. If they come in for 3, 4, or 6, they have a much shorter obligation. But what we`re saying really is that if them military believed 5 years ago that 4 years was still a good period for these people to serve on a priority basis, then it still is a good period for them to serve, and if they come in for 6 years, they still probably should be more vulnerable than an untrained person for the next 4 years, up to 10. In other words, it is a question of how you bring people in on a mobilization on a priority basis. Individual Ready Reserve is shrinking on paper. We have got to devise, and there isn`t one now -- the wartime Selective Service System -- to make sure that that picks up that 4 years, regardless of how long a person`s been in, on a priority basis to get him back in wartime. But it really is a paper problem, and a management problem, and a location problem, rather than the fact that the Individual Ready Reserve is shrinking so much that we`re without talent -- the talent`s still there. They`ve still got 4 years of value after x number of years they`re in the service.

LEHRER: Senator?

NUNN: They`re just not there if you have to call them. It`s that simple. They don`t have any obligation; we don`t have those people in a pool. Of course it`s a paper problem until you have a war. Everything concerning the military is a paper problem until you have a war. But the serious situation that exists with the IRR is much more serious because we do not have an expandable force, and we don`t even have a Selective Service System. Testimony the other day before our committee indicated it would take 110 days from the time we decided to go to a draft before we could get the first recruit to report to training.

LEHRER: But that`s a different question than whether the all volunteer force is working, is it not?

NUNN: Well, the Gates Commission which Steve served on, and I think he probably would agree with me on this, one of the fundamental premises they had, was that we would always have a standby draft. They did not ever foresee the time that we would not have that, but that has been done away with in the last 2 years by the previous administration.

HERBITS: Absolutely, that is a problem. The Defense Department left for the new administration had prepared over several months a proposal for a wartime draft system which is sitting now in the NSC it`s a good piece of work, and it`ll surface before very long, and we do need standby legislation. Part of the background of that, interestingly enough, is unfortunately politics. One of the decisions that was finally made after trying to get the current Selective Service System to update itself, modernize itself, use computers, go to a national pool with it -- the only way we`re going to get an effective standby system, is, unfortunately, to destroy the current one, and get a new one.

MacNEIL: Can we discuss another aspect of it? It`s often said with Manpower now running at, I believe, 56 per cent of the Defense budget, one of those fixed costs that no amount of Presidential de sire to cut budgets can do anything about, that the volunteer Army is very much more expensive than the draft. Is there really much difference in cost between a volunteer force and a conscripted force? Senator?

NUNN: There`s a great deal of difference in what the costs were before we went into the volunteer force, and what they are now. The estimates are from anywhere to 3 to 5 billion dollars you can take your choice. But that`s not the key to it. The key to it is: what would it cost if we had to expand that force with the present pay rates? That`s why I say we`ve gotten ourselves into a situation which is very, very difficult to get out of. The other thing that is very difficult -- there is not any way that we can all of a sudden go to another mechanism whether it`s the draft or a national service obligation, or a reserve draft or whatever and roll those costs back. So we are now in a very serious problem.

MacNEIL: I guess the question is this: are we paying more now per man in the Armed Services because they`re volunteers than we would be if we`d continued the draft to today and given them the necessary pay increase and so on?

NUNN: Oh, yes. We`re paying much more. We paid 60 million dollars last year for 25 thousand people to go into combat that would not have gone into the combat arms otherwise, and I think that`s a serious problem beyond the cost when you`re having to pay bonuses for people to go into the combat arms, what kind of force do you have? What kind of patriotism do you have? What kind of foundation do you have for the young people who are going to become the citizens of this country in future years? I have serious questions about the social aspects far beyond just the costs.

MacNEIL: Can we just get Mr. Herbits` reaction on the cost? Is this costing us a lot more than a draft army would have cost us?

HERBITS: I don`t think it`s related. The pay raise in 1971 was by Congress to catch up from 50 dollars per month for recruits where all the rest of the military remember, except for first termers, were paid comparable wages to their civilian counterpart so they wouldn`t be able to hold them. The pay raise in 1971 came in for two reasons, 1 out of 7, 1 out of 8, 1 out of 10 was being drafted. His brother staying at home was making substantially more than he was. The guy drafted was earning 60 per cent of what he could get. He was being penalized for 2 years out of the economy, and his own growth. The second reason was that 50 thousand people in 1972 were on food stamps in the military. It was decided to raise the pay to a comparable level because in the context of the draft, in the fact that it contributed to ending it, is another matter. It`s more important in a draft situation to do it than less.

MacNEIL: I guess the point is this: what most people think of when they hear criticism of the volunteer services is, "that means we have to go back to the draft." Supposing that were politically possible and necessary, would we save money going back to the draft?

HERBITS: I think almost nothing. We could talk about the bonus. The bonus is designed to get people into certain skills. High skills and combat skills. But what it also does is give us an extra year of an individual`s term, which gives you a cost avoidance down the road. It would be a better cost avoidance if some of the politicians would let us close some of the bases where we`re training at, but it does reduce the training establishment because we have him longer, and over a time, we save money with the bonus.In fact, two-thirds of the bonus is paid in the bonus program last year, 1975, for re-enlistment which is not relevant to the first term -- how you procure your first termers.

MacNEIL: Senator, of the various solutions to this: returning to the draft, improving the present system, or something else, where do you come down?

NUNN: I haven`t decided that yet, Robin. I think we have to look at all the options, and we have to do it over the next 12 to 18 months in a very serious and studious way. I don`t think we should panic; I think that we need to make sure that whatever we do is in the right direction. One thing that I think we ought to think about is a national service obligation for every young person rich, poor, black, white, female or male. Now there`re many options under that. One would be what we could call a minimum coercive thing; that they would not really have to go in, but they would have to sign up. We could go into a lot of details of that. We could also have an option whereby they would not have to serve in the military; they might serve in the Peace Corps, or ACTION, or some kind of environmental work, or some kind of rebuilding the rail beds in this country -- something like that. The military might be only one option there during peacetime, but we`d have to make it clear again that we`d have to have the standby authority to draft if we had a war.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Yes, let`s talk about one of the alternatives that the Senator just mentioned which is the Universal National Service. Donald Eberly has a special perspective on this particular proposal; he`s a senior policy analyst for ACTION, the government agency which currently oversees VISTA, the Peace Corps, and similar organizations. Mr. Eberly, what do you think of the universal service idea as an alternative to the volunteer approach?

DONALD EBERLY: Well, I think the guaranteed universal service on a voluntary basis is a good idea. I think it would be a big mistake to design . . .

LEHRER: On a volunteer basis?

EBERLY: On a voluntary basis. Think it would be a big mistake to design a national in-service program solely to respond to certain needs of the volunteer army or the draft army because when those needs went away, the National Youth Service program would go away. There are several major pieces of legislation in this Congress, introduced by such people as Senator Humphrey, and Cranston, and Kennedy, and Ambassador Young before he went into the U.N., and these would set up National Youth Service programs to meet the problem of unemployment of young people. There are three and a half million unemployed, looking-for-work people between the ages of 16 and 24 today. The major reason we need a National Youth Service program is the service needs of society. There are literally millions of jobs in the woodlands with the Forest Service, with the Park Service -- had a report from the Consultant to the Environmental Protection Agency just yesterday saying that there`s an immediate need for some 60 thousand young people in environmental areas. The long range need over a period of 3 years would be a half a million people in this area alone. Here in Washington, D.C., I would like to see a program in which 2 thousand young people served as tutors and teacher aids. The real needs are the service needs of the country. We need to stand up and to ask our young people to serve, to finish the war on poverty that President Johnson declared.

LEHRER: But what about the hot wars that might have to be fought, or at least people to stand by to fight a hot war? How would that work? I mean, do you think that has viability?

EBERLY: We designed a program to deal with that when President Johnson set up the National Advisory Commission on Selective Service in 1966,and the National Service Program, which I helped to put together for them at that time would have set up National Service under a Youth Service Foundation -- a private, public agency like the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, drawing federal funds -- and the only . . .

LEHRER: Couldn`t you come up with another example? (Laughs) No, that`s all right.

EBERLY: . . . the only linkage with the military would have been in times of draft; young men, who would otherwise have to be drafted, would be given the same kind of status as the 1-Y or Z or whatever it might turn out to be, as the one who had served in military service. So that those most eligible, most vulnerable to being drafted under that kind of condition, would be the young men who had chosen neither to go into the military service nor the civilian service. And then for women, it would be totally voluntary. We did an experiment on this in the state of Washington under ACTION a few years ago. Of course, this could have no relationship to the military, and it was a small program, but we were interested in finding out the kinds of people between the ages of 18 and 25 who came forward for this program. Whether they`d be all poor, whether they`d be the rich kids. We gave them, incidentally, about 90 per cent of the minimum wage as assistance allowance. What we found was that they were 60 per cent women; we found that the minority group was higher than average -- it was 20 per cent rather than 14 per cent -- most of all, though, they tended to be unemployed -- 70 per cent were unemployed and looking for work. And yet half a year after they finished service with this experimental program, only 18 per cent were unemployed.

LEHRER: Of course, relevance there -- you would have to extrapolate quite a bit, would you not, to make that relevant to a compulsory national service -- you`re talking about a voluntary.

EBERLY: There have been various opinions, one in 1966 by a lawyer attached to the Burke-Marshall Commission, and another in 1970 by the Library of Congress -- both times they said that a compulsory draft for civilian service is probably unconstitutional. They could not, of course, give a definitive answer. They said it is probably unconstitutional to draft for civilian service.

MacNEIL: Well how could that help the problems the Senator`s talking about, if you accept his interpretation of the dangers in the future -- the all-volunteer thing -- if it was not compulsory? Surely all the kids who don`t want to join the Army now voluntarily would not want to join it any more voluntarily as part of the kind of service you`re talking about. They would go for the more attractive and less coercive ends of the thing. Would they not? In other words, why would it help the military recruiting situation if that situation is in trouble now?

EBERLY: I did a survey on this, some years ago, again a very small one. I found that that there was a hard core of about 15 per cent of the young men, who under any conditions, even though the military service was more severe in terms of pay and duration of service and discipline and so forth, they would have gone in the military. There was another hard core of 15 per cent of those who would have chosen civilian service under any conditions. Between that . . .

MacNEIL: And the other 70 per cent wouldn`t have been in at all, is that it?

EBERLY: No, they would have floated depending upon the conditions. Whether one was more attractive, having a GI Bill attached to it would make it more attractive. And then the duration -- you could have -- when Senator Humphrey first put up his Peace Corps proposal in 1960, he called for 3 years in the Peace Corps as being equivalent to 2 years in the military service. And the first time President Kennedy came out with the Peace Corps proposal, he included that.

MacNEIL: What do you think of that, Mr. Herbits?

HERBITS: The one danger I see in Voluntary National Service programs is that it may draw off a certain quality that we want for the military which would force us back into a compulsion situation, which, in my mind, is not desirable. I believe we should be able to do it -- it`s better for the military -- it`s better for the country if there is pressure on the military to keep a volunteer system. I just am opposed to compulsion as a matter of principle, don`t think we have to conduct our business that way, and have dozens and dozens of examples of why the Army is beginning to believe it`s better off now in terms of readiness, in terms of the condition of training, in terms of its ability to get a lot of non-adjusters out at an early stage in the Army so that the people that actually report to units and work with units are there working together for the fist time.

NUNN: Let me mention one point there; I think this is important because it`s one of the things the Gates Commission assumed that has / totally changed. The Gates Commission`s assumption that the volunteer force would in some ways be more economical was based on stability, lack of turnover. Now what`s happened, the attrition rate has gone up since the draft ended. In 1976 there were over a 100 thousand people who got out of the service during a period of time before their tenure ended 70 per cent of those were for cause -- there was some kind of problem with them, and most of them were in the first year. So what the Army is doing is taking in huge numbers of people, many of whom are not qualified, and flushing them out. It`s a revolving door. Now I think this has a real impact on society because the people who are being flushed out are going back as failures, and I think this is something that addresses itself to the youth problems we have in the country today and is totally opposed to the basic premise of the Gates Commission Report.

LEHRER: We have just a few seconds left. Senator, based on your position and your knowledge of the mood of the Congress and what people really want to know in this whole thing, once this whole debate is over with, is there any real probability that the draft is going to be reinstated anytime soon? Without war, I mean a peacetime draft?

NUNN: I don`t think the kind of draft we had in Vietnam would be, I -- I wouldn`t favor it. If we had it, we`d have to go back to something that would be a lot fairer than it`s ever been before. So I would say we will not be going back to that kind of draft in the immediate future. We may have some kind of draft of reservist of we may have a national service kind of obligation, as we`ve discussed, but not the kind of draft we had during Vietnam.

LEHRER: Do you think there is going to be some change in this all- volunteer force in the near future?

NUNN: If I`m correct, I think there`ll have to be. I don`t believe it`ll be in the next 12 months, but I`m going to do what I can to stimulate some debate in that period.

MacNEIL: Well, thank you all very much for coming. Good night, Jim. Jim Lehrer and I`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.