[Senate Hearing 117-922]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 117-922
THE FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS AND REPORT
OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON MILITARY,
NATIONAL, AND PUBLIC SERVICE
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 11, 2021
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Armed Services
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via: http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
59-453 PDF WASHINGTON : 2025
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COMMITTEE ON ARMED SERVICES
JACK REED, Rhode Island, Chairman JAMES M. INHOFE, Oklahoma
JEANNE SHAHEEN, New Hampshire ROGER F. WICKER, Mississippi
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York DEB FISCHER, Nebraska
RICHARD BLUMENTHAL, Connecticut TOM COTTON, Arkansas
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii MIKE ROUNDS, South Dakota
TIM KAINE, Virginia JONI ERNST, Iowa
ANGUS S. KING, Jr., Maine THOM TILLIS, North Carolina
ELIZABETH WARREN, Massachusetts DAN SULLIVAN, Alaska
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan KEVIN CRAMER, North Dakota
JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia RICK SCOTT, Florida
TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
JACKY ROSEN, Nevada JOSH HAWLEY, Missouri
MARK KELLY, Arizona TOMMY TUBERVILLE, Alabama
Elizabeth L. King, Staff Director
John D. Wason, Minority Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
_________________________________________________________________
March 11, 2021
Page
The Final Recommendations and Report of the National Commission 1
on Military, National, and Public Service.
Member Statements
Statement of Senator Jack Reed................................... 1
Statement of Senator James Inhofe................................ 3
Witness Statements
Heck, Dr. Joseph J., Chairman, National Commission on Military, 4
National, and Public Service.
Service Year Alliance Statement.................................. 42
(iii)
THE FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS AND REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COMMISSION ON
MILITARY, NATIONAL, AND PUBLIC SERVICE
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
United States Senate,
Committee on Armed Services,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m. in room
SD-G50, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Senator Jack Reed
(Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Committee Members present: Senators Reed, Gillibrand,
Blumenthal, Kaine, King, Peters, Manchin, Duckworth, Rosen,
Kelly, Inhofe, Fischer, Cotton, Rounds, Ernst, Tillis,
Sullivan, Scott, Blackburn, Hawley, and Tuberville.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR JACK REED
Chairman Reed. Let me call the hearing to order. Good
morning. Today the committee meets to receive testimony on the
Final Report and Recommendations of the National Commission for
Military, National, and Public Service.
I want to thank our witnesses for appearing today and for
their patience. The Commission actually concluded its work a
year ago, and the committee had to postpone the scheduled
hearing due to the pandemic. I think this past year has
underscored the importance of a shared commitment to the public
good and the Commission's recommendations resonate even more
strongly today.
Today we will hear testimony from the Honorable Dr. Joseph
Heck, who served as Chairman of the Commission, following a
distinguished career in the House of Representatives, including
as Chairman of the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House
Armed Services Committee. Dr. Heck also continues to serve as a
major general in the Army Reserve. Thank you General Doctor.
The Honorable Debra Wada served as Vice Chair of the
Commission for Military Service, following her tenure as the
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Manpower and Reserve
Affairs during the Obama administration. Ms. Wada also has over
a decade of service as a senior advisor and staff member on the
House Armed Services Committee.
Finally today, Mr. Alan Khazei served as a Commissioner on
the Commission, and has extensive background in national
service programs. Mr. Khazei is the founder and former CEO
[chief executive officer] of City Year, a precursor to and
model for today's AmeriCorps program.
I must also give a shout-out to Mark Gearan, who was the
Vice Chairman. Mark was a former Director of the Peace Corps
and the President of Hobart College, and he, along with
Chairman Heck, did a superb job, along with all the
Commissioners.
The importance of the Commission's work cannot be
overstated. As many of my colleagues will recall, the immediate
legislative concern that gave rise to the Commission was the
military Selective Service System (SSS), and whether it
continues to meet the needs of the Nation today. In addition,
when the Department of Defense opened all military positions to
service by women in 2016, the question was raised whether women
should register for the Selective Service and if there were
constitutional concerns if women were not required to register.
As I stated then, I believe that women should be included in
military Selective Service. In testimony before this committee,
past military service chiefs testified to their personal
opinion that women should be required to register for the
draft.
Beyond the issue of the Selective Service, the Commission
also explored ``the means by which to foster a greater attitude
and ethos of service among United States youth, including an
increased propensity for military service.'' This is an
increasingly urgent matter. Today, barely 25 percent of
America's youth aged 17 to 24 meet military entrance
requirements. Furthermore, the most recent data from the
Defense Department reveals that only 10 percent of youth now
show a propensity to serve in the military, and this figure
continues to drop, raising the question of how the military
services can meet future recruiting missions without
sacrificing quality.
Of course, as this panel well knows, the issue of service
is more fundamental than the question of who is required to
register for military service. It is a question of who is
expected to serve, who wants to serve, and who will have the
opportunity to serve, not just in the military but in national
and public service as well. These are questions of our national
character and aspirations, and that is why we expanded the
Commission's mandate to include national and public service.
The 2003 Report of the National Commission on Public
Service, a predecessor report, otherwise known as the Volcker
Report, stated the problem well: ``The notion of public
service, once a noble calling proudly pursued by the most
talented Americans of every generation, draws an indifferent
response from today's youth and repels many of the country's
leading private citizens.''
The challenge remains even more urgent today. Years of
budget constraints have led to furloughs, wage stagnation, and
low morale among the Federal public sector workforce. Likewise,
national service programs such as AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps,
and the Senior Corps are funded today at levels that fail to
match demand, even as the need is greater today than it has
ever been. Our national service infrastructure, from the
military to the Corporation for National and Community Service,
has been working tirelessly during the pandemic to provide
testing, vaccinations, contact tracing, even food distribution.
We, as a government, must be prepared to invest in what is
truly our Nation's great asset. Those are our public and
community servants. Service to others and the Nation, whether
it be military, national, or public service, is a healing,
unifying, and patriotic act that we need a lot more of today,
not less.
I thank our witnesses again, as well as all of the
commissioners and staff of the National Service Commission for
their work, their bold ideas, and their call to action for a
better America and a more hopeful and optimistic future rooted
in service, and I look forward to their testimony.
Senator Inhofe, please.
STATEMENT OF SENATOR JAMES INHOFE
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I commend you for
holding this hearing today and I am very interested in the
report of the National Commission--I guess there are three
reports. I am not sure what I am looking at here, but we will
sure find out--and the recommendations that will come with
them. The report must be subject to an open debate. We need to
get everybody in on this deal. I think the American people
deserve that, and the hearing today is an excellent start.
Chairman Heck and Vice--I am going to make sure I am
pronouncing this right, but Vice Chairman Wada--or, Wadu?
Somebody help me.
Voice. Wada.
Senator Inhofe. Wada. Okay--and Commissioner Khazei,
welcome, and I am glad you are here today. I want to thank all
the commissioners for the hard work and the commitment that you
have that is plain in every page of your report. Your work is
important to the future of our national security.
I have got kind of a unique perspective, because I was the
product of the draft. That was a time when I did not want to be
drafted, and I was a mess. I honestly do not think I would be
alive today if it had not been for the time that I spent. I
look at all the problems that we have with young people today,
and I think, you know, if they had gone through a basic
training, the way it was in the good old days and all that, I
just think that would resolve a lot of the problems that we
have.
So I have to admit, I come to this meeting with a bias.
Even our current crisis shows that spirit of service is part of
being an American, but we must do a better job of educating
people about what it means to be a citizen of this great
Nation. We also need to inform people about the many
opportunities to serve, whether in the military, civil service,
or local communities, and the benefits of such service to
themselves and to others. So I look forward to this meeting.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Well, thank you very much, Chairman Inhofe,
and now Ranking Member Inhofe, for your participation, because
you were here when we put this Commission together and you
contributed immensely. Thank you.
Now I am going to turn to Dr. Heck for his statement, who I
understand will deliver the statement for the entire panel,
using the time that would normally be assigned to each witness.
Dr. Heck, please.
STATEMENT OF DR. JOSEPH J. HECK, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL COMMISSION
ON MILITARY, NATIONAL, AND PUBLIC SERVICE
Dr. Heck. Thank you. Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Inhofe,
and Members of the Committee, on behalf of all of the
commissioners and our dedicated and talented staff, my
colleagues and I thank you for the opportunity to appear before
you today to discuss the findings of the National Commission on
Military, National, and Public Service. At your desk you have
three documents, as Senator Inhofe pointed out--the full
report, an executive summary, and then a legislative annex.
Congress charged the Commission to review the military
Selective Service System, and, perhaps more importantly,
identify ways to increase Americans' participation in military,
national, and public service in order to address the needs of
the Nation. Last March, we were honored to submit our report,
``Inspired to Serve,'' to Congress, the President, and the
American people. Our work culminated in 164 discrete
recommendations, reflecting the first comprehensive and
holistic review of the Selective Service System and all forms
of service in U.S. history.
"Inspired to Serve'' reflects 2\1/2\ years of extensive
research, public hearings, and conversations with Americans
from all across the country. As part of our work, the
Commission visited 22 states across all 9 census districts. We
traveled the country, visiting urban centers, suburban
neighborhoods, and rural towns. We spoke with elected leaders,
nonprofit organizations, faith-based communities, military
officers and enlisted, middle school, high school, and college
students, those who serve and those who do not. We engaged with
530 organizations, held 11 public meetings and forums, analyzed
thousands of public comments, leveraged multiple surveys, and
convened 14 public hearings to discuss and analyze a wide
variety of policy proposals.
In this time of nationwide crisis, we bring a good-news
story. America's extraordinary and long-standing spirit of
service continues to shape the life of our Nation. We also
bring an opportunity. In a country of 330 million people, only
11 percent of the adult population engages in sustained
national service, leaving the extraordinary potential for
service largely untapped.
Our recommendations offer a bold vision and a comprehensive
plan that will nurture the spirit of service that currently
exists into a culture of service, that by 2031, the 70th
anniversary of President Kennedy's call to ask not what your
country can do for you but what you can do for your country, we
have an expectation that all Americans will engage in some form
of service.
The coronavirus pandemic has made clear that the United
States must have a robust, tested infrastructure capable of
mobilizing the Nation in emergency situations. We need experts
in government at all levels with the skill and experience to
address the unexpected. We need the talents and commitment of
individual Americans and the resources of the private sector to
mobilize a whole-of-society effort in times of crisis.
The Commission's recommendations aim to strengthen all
forms of service to meet domestic and national security needs,
including policies that would enhance our ability to respond to
national emergencies. I will briefly address the highlights of
each area, and we are prepared to go into detail in the
questions and answers.
As a Nation, we must improve the readiness of the national
mobilization system through whole-of-government leadership,
regular exercises, and improved public awareness. Our
recommendations would require the Department of Defense (DOD)
and the Selective Service System to conduct regular exercises,
improve public awareness, and identify officials at Defense and
in the National Security Council to lead mobilization planning
and response to a range of national emergencies.
One piece of this is the military Selective Service System.
The Nation must be prepared to address unforeseen existential
threats. After extensive research, deliberation, discussion
with experts and the American public, we recommend that the
United States maintain the Selective Service System. It is a
low-cost insurance policy to supplement military personnel
requirements in the face of a national emergency.
However, the system does require modification. Most
significantly, in the event of a draft, the Nation must
leverage the skills and talents of all Americans, regardless of
gender. Including women in Selective Service registration is
what the national security interests of the United States
demand. It will improve the ability of the military to maintain
higher standards in the event conscription is ever needed.
Removing oneself from the emotion, passion, and convictions
deeply held by opponents and proponents on this issue, this
decision ultimately comes down to two factors: standards and
equity. At a time, as you pointed out, Mr. Chairman, when
nearly 70 percent of 17- to 24-year-olds will fail to meet
initial military accession standards, we cannot afford to
exclude half the population, the female half, from the
potential pool of inductees. If a draft is enacted, we should
want to ensure that as many people of the highest quality can
serve, those who are more likely to complete training
successfully and be more proficient at their jobs.
Expanding draft eligibility to women is, therefore, an
issue of standards, not gender. Expansion will strengthen U.S.
national security and mitigate the risks imposed by an
unforeseen future. It will enable the military to access the
most qualified individuals, regardless of sex, to fulfill the
variety of positions necessary to respond to an ever-changing
threat environment, and provide all Americans an opportunity to
meet their civic obligations.
The rights and freedoms that come with being an American
citizen are accompanied by responsibilities, including the
defense of the Nation. Selective Service registration
presupposes this common obligation to provide for the common
defense. Consequently, the disparate treatment of women in the
context of the Selective Service System unacceptably bars women
from sharing in this fundamental civic obligation. Male-only
registration sends a message to women that they are not vital
to the defense of the country and that they are not expected to
participate in defending it. Hence, requiring women to register
and perhaps be drafted affirms registration as a common civic
duty. America is simply stronger when we all engage in the
obligations of citizenship.
Extending registration also furthers a key goal of the
interim
National Security Strategy just issued by the White House
earlier this month to, quote, ``modernize our national security
institutions and processes while ensuring we take advantage of
the full diversity of talents required to address today's
complex challenges,'' end quote.
We also recommend measures to enhance the tradition of
voluntary military service by creating a continuum between the
routine recruiting mechanisms of the U.S. military and a dire
situation that may require activation of the draft. For
example, creating a critical skills individual ready Reserve of
Americans without prior military experience who would
immediately join as their skill sets are needed; creating a
civilian cybersecurity Reserve of former government cyber
experts to provide DHS [Department of Homeland Security] and
NSA [National Security Agency] with surge capacity; a national
roster of individuals ready to volunteer in a national, state,
or local emergency; and a formal presidential call for
volunteers to join the military prior to initiating a draft.
We also identified critical trends that indicate a
deepening of the civil-military divide and raise concerns about
the long-term sustainability of the All-Volunteer Force. First,
gaps in understanding and interaction between civilian and
military communities have grown as a smaller percentage of
Americans participate in military service. Second, enlisted
recruiting remains uneven across the United States, with
certain geographic regions furnishing a disproportionate share
of recruits. Third, less than 30 percent of American youth are
eligible to join the military without a waiver, and even fewer
are interested.
Among our recommendations are the Department of Defense
joining with additional funding from Congress to increase
investment of recruiting resources in under-represented markets
and hometown recruiting programs; expanding youth citizenship
programs, such as JROTC [Junior Reserve Officers' Training
Corps]; and encouraging broader use of tools, such as the Armed
Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Career Exploration Program
(ASVAB).
We were pleased to see that the Fiscal Year 2021 National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) adopted our recommendation to
include an introduction to military, national, and public
service opportunities in existing JROTC programs. These and
other recommendations would increase awareness of the realities
of military life and engagement between the military and the
broader American public, enhancing the military's ability to
attract and retain qualified personnel.
Moving to public service, we recognize that public servants
are vital to the security and well-being of the Nation. The
current public health crisis has made this abundantly clear to
all of us. With just 6 percent of the Federal workforce under
30 years of age, and more than a third eligible to retire in
the next 5 years, agencies must attract the next generation of
public servants. Yet basic hiring processes are dysfunctional.
Most agencies lack effective internship programs, flexibility
in benefits is not competitive with the private sector, and
piecemeal special hiring authorities have proliferated without
sustainable fixes to the overall personnel system. To fix
Federal hiring, we propose ways to transform recruiting,
improve internships, attract and retain critical talent,
modernize benefits, and create new pipelines to public service.
We also propose critical improvements to help bring more
talented military veterans into public service. Our
recommendations would make veterans' preference a tiebreaker
between equally qualified candidates, refocus the preference on
recently discharged veterans transitioning to civilian
employment, and expand eligibility for the veterans'
recruitment appointment from the current 3 years to 10 years
after discharge.
In national service, the Federal Government supports more
than 300,000 positions annually through AmeriCorps, Peace
Corps, YouthBuild, and other programs, national service
volunteers who roll up their sleeves and help meet the critical
needs of the Nation. They provide critical disaster relief
support, combat the opioid crisis, preserve parks and public
lands, teach public school students in low- resourced
communities, and much more. Yet, most Americans do not know
what national service is or how to get involved. Nearly one-
third of millennials state that they are unaware of existing
national service opportunities.
Our recommendations promote awareness of national service
and link recruiting efforts between military and national
service, such that aspiring individuals who are ineligible for
service in one type of program can learn about opportunities in
the other. We propose ways to improve benefits to attract more
Americans to this important work, and recommend continued
enhancements to the national service infrastructure. Our goal
is that national service opportunities will grow to 1 million
annually by the year 2031. To help achieve this goal, the
Commission has proposed a new, ground-breaking national service
fellowship program that would let individuals choose where they
want to serve, allowing more community, faith-based, and other
nonprofit organizations, especially those in rural, tribal, or
under-resourced areas to participate.
Our work also illuminated the need for better coordination
of service efforts among the various agencies and organizations
involved in managing and overseeing service activities. I
highlight two of our recommendations designed to address this.
First is establishing an interagency council in the White House
that would elevate all streams of service and provide a forum
for encouraging coordination and communications. Second is
creating an online platform that can function as a one-stop
shop for service opportunities, a virtual clearing house that
would connect service organizations with potential talent, and
would provide immeasurable benefits for individual Americans
and organization in military, national, and public service.
When we began this journey, we did not expect to hear
passionate calls from Americans across the country to improve
civic education, but we did, and loudly. We also learned about
the dire condition of civic education in America and the
promise of integrating service learning methods into teaching.
To that end, the Commission has recommended that Congress make
a significant financial commitment to jumpstart a nationwide
revitalization of civic education and service learning to
ensure young people are equipped with the knowledge, skills,
and dispositions to actively participate in civic life and
understand the importance of serving one's nation and
community.
In closing, on behalf of this Commission, we call on the
Congress and the President to invest in the American people and
the security of the Nation by taking action, bold action, to
ensure that every American has a clear and supported path to
service. We believe that now is the time to build a new culture
of service and strengthen our republic, one in which every
American is inspired and eager to serve.
We thank you again for the opportunity to appear here
before you. We look forward to your questions.
[The joint prepared statement of Dr. Joseph Heck, Ms. Debra
Wada, and Mr. Alan Khazei follows:]
The joint prepared statement of the Dr. Heck, Ms. Wada, and Mr. Khazei
Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Inhofe, and Members of the Committee,
my colleagues and I thank you for the opportunity to appear before you
today on behalf of the National Commission on military, national, and
public service (the Commission) and its eleven Commissioners to discuss
the findings and recommendations contained in the Commission's final
report. We would also like to thank the leadership of the late Senator
John McCain for supporting the Commission's work.
Congress created the Commission in the National Defense
Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 as a bipartisan body with
members selected by congressional leadership and the President. This is
the first time that Congress asked a body to look at all three critical
legs of the service stool--military, national, and public service--as
an overall system. Congress charged us to ``conduct a review of the
military selective service process'' and to ``consider methods to
increase participation in military, national, and public service in
order to address national security and other public service needs of
the Nation.'' Throughout our work, from the fall of 2017 through the
fall of 2020, we embraced and fulfilled both parts of this mandate.
Almost 1 year ago, on March 25, 2020, we were honored to submit to
Congress, the President, and the American people the culmination of our
work--``Inspired to Serve''--along with legislative proposals designed
to implement many of the recommendations. The release of the report
corresponded with lockdown orders and other measures taken to combat
the ongoing public health crisis--a global pandemic that has disrupted
nearly every aspect of life and the effects of which will remain with
us for years to come. It is the Commission's ardent belief that service
is integral to responding to COVID-19 and the clear inequities the
pandemic has exposed in health care, education, the environment, and
more. Many of the recommendations included in ``Inspired to Serve,'' if
acted on, will create a more resilient Nation, better prepared to meet
the next national emergency, regardless of what form it takes. With 164
recommendations, ``Inspired to Serve'' contains a bold vision and
comprehensive plan to strengthen all forms of service--military,
national and public service--to address critical national and domestic
needs, invigorate civil society, unite our people in common purpose and
strengthen our democracy. The Commission is united behind this report
as a consensus product, and every recommendation has the support of a
bipartisan supermajority of the Commission.
The recommendations we propose are based on extensive research and
an equally expansive effort to learn from a wide spectrum of the
American public. We traveled across the Nation to learn firsthand about
Americans' views on and experience with service, visiting 42 cities in
22 states across all nine census districts. The Commission conducted
interviews with individuals from over 530 organizations that have a
connection to service, including those who participate in, lead, or
study activities included in the Commission's mandate. From experts and
leaders with decades of experience in their fields, to mid-level
managers who are implementing policies at the State and local level, to
program participants who are just beginning to explore what it means to
serve, the insights offered by these individuals shaped the
Commission's understanding of what service looks like today. In
addition, the Commission held 11 public meetings and forums, analyzed
more than 4,300 public comments, leveraged multiple surveys with
partner organizations, and convened 14 open hearings with 68 policy
experts to discuss and analyze a wide variety of policy proposals.
We found that, as was the case over 225 years ago during the
earliest days of the Republic, America's extraordinary and longstanding
spirit of service continues to shape the life of our Nation. As our
report details, we heard inspiring stories of dedicated military,
national, and public service everywhere we went. We also heard a clear
desire for dramatically more opportunities to serve and needs to be
met. It became clear to us, in a country of 329 million Americans, the
full potential for service remains largely untapped. ``Inspired to
Serve'' offers a bold and inclusive vision to significantly strengthen
the culture of service in our Nation, beginning with comprehensive
civic education and service learning starting in kindergarten through
high school, service opportunities so ubiquitous that a year of
national service becomes a rite of passage for millions of young
adults, and new and revitalized service options for adults of any age,
background, or experience. By the year 2031--the 70th anniversary of
President Kennedy's ``Ask Not'' call for Americans to serve our
Nation--we envision five million Americans will begin to serve in
military, national, or public service each year. Our long-term goal is
to cultivate a culture in which service is a common expectation and
experience for all Americans--when it is the norm, rather than the
exception--when every American is inspired and eager to serve. By
igniting the extraordinary potential for service, our recommendations
will address critical national security and domestic needs, expand
economic and educational opportunities, unite people from different
backgrounds in common cause and strengthen the civic fabric of the
Nation.
strengthening emergency national mobilization
Throughout the history of the United States, Americans have proven
their willingness to defend the country through military service. The
Commission embraces the American tradition of first seeking volunteers
for military service to meet national needs. The Commission has
identified a need for a continuum between the routine recruiting
mechanisms of the U.S. military and the activation of the draft and
believes the Nation must develop policy options across that continuum.
Nevertheless, the Commission ultimately concluded that the United
States should maintain a draft contingency mechanism for mandatory
military service in order to organize and mobilize Americans in the
event of a national emergency. The Commission has also recommended that
ongoing, active registration with a modernized version of the Selective
Service System is the best and most feasible way to draw on the
talents, skills, and abilities of Americans to meet evolving national
security needs and support the common defense.
The United States faces threats to vital national security
interests and the potential for existential threats, natural or
manmade, persist. As the National Defense Strategy Commission explained
in 2018, ``given the differing needs for forces across theaters, the
challenges of projecting power over great distances, and the fact that
the United States has rarely been able to predict precisely where or
how adversaries will challenge its interests, the U.S. military will
surely experience unanticipated force demands in coming years.'' \1\
Similarly, the Department of Defense noted in its 2017 report to
Congress that the Selective Service ``is not a theoretical
capability,'' but ``is the only proven, time-tested mechanism by which
to expand the [U.S. military] in the event of a national emergency.''
\2\
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\1\ National Defense Strategy Commission, Providing for the Common
Defense: The Assessment and Recommendations of the National Defense
Strategy Commission (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace,
November 2018), 21, https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/11/
providing-common-defense.
\2\ Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and
Readiness (OUSD (P&R)), Report on the Purpose and Utility of a
Registration System for Military Selective Service (Washington, DC:
DOD, July 2017), 10 (emphasis in the original).
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The Commission determined the Selective Service System remains an
essential component of the Nation's military preparedness and serves a
function that cannot be replaced through other identified methods. The
Commission shares the view of the Department of Defense that the
Selective Service System is a necessary low-cost insurance policy
against a shortage of military personnel as well as a symbol of U.S.
resolve to mobilize the Nation to meet commitments to its Armed Forces,
allies, and partners.
The Commission also determined, however, that the broader emergency
national mobilization system requires significant modernization in
order to be fully prepared in the event of a national emergency. The
ongoing pandemic has laid bare that agility and effectiveness in
government response requires advanced planning and continuous stress
testing. Ensuring that the Selective Service System can serve as an
effective insurance policy requires improving the readiness of the
entire national mobilization process, not just the Selective Service
System, by holistically reviewing institutional and organization
functions and roles that have not been exercised in the 21st century.
The Department of Defense's focus on resource-informed planning and
immediate demands on the force have come at the expense of planning for
a national mobilization and regularly testing those plans and concepts.
The Commission urges the National Security Council and the Department
of Defense to review and revise plans for responding to national
emergencies that might necessitate a draft; specifically, the
Commission proposed that the government formalize mechanisms to
encourage additional volunteers and develop approaches to test existing
plans and coordinate among key organizations responsible for national
mobilization.
The Commission's recommendations seek to empower agencies and
leaders to take the steps required to enhance this system, educate the
public regarding their solemn and civic responsibilities to help defend
the Nation if called to do so, and ensure the government can call up
the most qualified Americans to meet the national security needs of the
Nation if Congress and the President determine a draft is required.
Likewise, the Commission has determined that the Selective Service
System itself--a system created over one hundred years ago in 1917--
must modernize in order to achieve the objectives set forth above.
Among these, the Commission recommended broader awareness of the
purpose of registration and the function of the Selective Service
System. While maintaining the Selective Service System is critical to
ensuring national preparedness, the Commission found that few young
Americans have a deep understanding or even awareness of the system's
basic requirements. A survey conducted by the Department of Defense's
Joint Advertising, Market Research and Studies (JAMRS) revealed that
only 35 percent of young Americans could correctly identify the current
registration requirement for young adult men. The Commission believes
that Selective Service System registration deserves a moment of earnest
reflection and our report includes several ways to help every
registrant understand the purpose and potential implication of their
civic duty.
The Commission also considered, at the request of Congress,
potential mechanisms to draft individuals with critical skills. The
changing nature of warfare, including rapid technological advancements
and the increased specialization required to address global security
issues, has certainly heightened the need for individuals with critical
skills necessary to maintain a military advantage. However, the
Commission ultimately concluded the best way to leverage individuals
with critical skills would be through innovative new voluntary
mechanisms, such as the creation of an individual ready Reserve focused
on critical skills and a national roster of volunteers.
The Commission also considered whether women should register with
the Selective Service System. More than any other topic within the
Commission's mandate, the question of expanding Selective Service
registration to all Americans, regardless of gender, evoked a range of
passionate and deeply held moral, legal, and practical views. The
Commission listened to diverse perspectives from the American people,
consulted with experts from a wide variety of disciplines and groups,
and examined the available evidence surrounding the issue. After
extensive deliberations, the Commission ultimately decided that it is
in the national security interest of the United States that all
Americans, men and women, register for Selective Service and be
prepared to serve in the event a draft is enacted by Congress and the
President.
The core function of the Selective Service System is to deliver
individuals qualified for induction into military service to meet a
wide range of Department of Defense personnel needs in the event of a
national emergency, which includes non-combat and combat positions. \3\
Throughout American history, unanticipated force demands have occurred
and most conflicts have persisted longer than initially projected. In
times of unmet personnel needs, the Department of Defense has regularly
resorted to reducing quality standards, harming our Armed Forces'
ability to respond to national security threats. \4\ Should
circumstances necessitate a draft, including women in the pool of
individuals eligible for selection would improve the military's ability
to maintain higher military standards. Of the 17 to 24 year old cohort,
equal proportions of women and men meet initial military accession
standards--an estimated 29.3 percent of women versus 29.0 percent of
men. \5\ Women have served in every war throughout American history,
and more than 224,000 serve in the U.S. Armed Forces today. Since the
decision by the Department of Defense to open combat roles to women
starting in 2016, thousands have proven they are qualified to serve in
combat. Therefore, the Commission has found that women and men are
equally capable of performing duties that meet the needs of the
Department of Defense in a national emergency.
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\3\ For example, 16 million men--10 million of whom were
conscripted--served during World War II. Over half of all enlisted
personnel in the U.S. military worked in just three occupations:
mechanics, administrative and clerical workers, and providers of
services to the force. See The President's Commission on an All-
Volunteer Armed Force, The Report of the President's Commission on an
All-Volunteer Armed Force, 44, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/
pubs/monograph/MG265/images/webS0243.pdf.
\4\ ``Project 100,000: New Standards Program'' (Washington, DC,
RAND, September 1966), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/
monographs/MG265/images/webG1318.pdf; Arnold Isaacs, ``Book Review:
McNamara's Folly,'' review of McNamara's Folly: The Use of Low-IQ
Troops in the Vietnam War, by Hamilton Gregory, Modern War Institute,
August 18, 2016, https://mwi.usma.edu/book-review-mcnamaras-folly/; and
Jerry D. Morelock, ``McNamara's Folly: Lowering the Standards to Fill
the Ranks,'' Vietnam Magazine, December 2016, https://
www.historynet.com/mcnamaras-folly-lowering-standards-fill-ranks.htm.
\5\ JAMRS estimates that 29.3 percent of women in the 17-to 24-
year-old bracket are eligible for military service, verses 29.0 percent
of men. See Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (Personnel and
Readiness), Qualified Military Available Report (Washington, DC:
Department of Defense, 2013).
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Furthermore, eligibility for the draft has historically centered on
the contemporary judgement of Americans regarding who was fit for
military service, and registration for the Selective Service System is
premised on the notion of a common obligation to provide for the
defense of the Nation. It is the equal obligation of all Americans to
defend the Nation if called to do so. Registering women for Selective
Service, and if necessary, including women in a draft, acknowledges the
value women bring to the U.S. Armed Forces, and the talents, skills,
and abilities women would offer in defending the Nation in a national
emergency.
advancing military, national, and public service
Service has been a part of the Nation's core values and social
fabric since its founding. Together, military, national, and public
service shape almost every aspect of American life and help meet the
Nation's many critical needs. The men and women serving in the Armed
Forces provide for the common defense of the United States; national
service members use their time and talents to enhance government
capacity and meet national and local needs; and civil servants provide
critical functions for the common good. While great work is being done
across the Nation in each of these areas, cultivating a culture of
service in the United States requires immediate action and continued
attention as well as a frank discussion of how to increase awareness
of, aspiration for, and access to service.
Advancing Military Service
The defense of the Nation depends on the continued success and
strength of America's military. We must ensure the military is strong,
sustainable, and capable of meeting new and emerging threats. Since the
United States ended the draft in 1973, it has relied exclusively on the
All-Volunteer Force to fulfill the Nation's military personnel needs.
Yet three trends currently pose challenges to the long-term
sustainability of the All-Volunteer Force. First, because only a small
percentage of Americans--less than 0.5 percent--currently serve on
Active Duty, gaps in understanding and interaction between civilian and
military communities have grown. Second, enlisted recruiting remains
uneven across the United States, with select geographic regions
furnishing a disproportionate share of recruits; in fiscal year 2017,
for example, 70 percent of new enlisted accessions came from the South
and West. Third, an increasing percentage of American youth are
ineligible to join the military without a waiver and even fewer are
interested in military service. For example, an estimated 71 percent of
youth are ineligible for military service and a mere 14 percent of
youth expressed interest serving in the Armed Forces.
The Commission's recommendations and legislative proposals would
address these trends by increasing awareness of the realities of
military life and full range of occupations available and enhancing the
military's ability to attract and retain qualified personnel critical
to the long-term success of the All-Volunteer Force. This includes
investing more recruiting resources in underrepresented markets and
hometown-recruiting programs to help meet recruiting goals and ensure
the U.S. military reflects the Nation. The Commission further proposes
expanding youth programs such as Junior Reserve Officers' Training
Corps and encouraging broader utilization of tools such as the Armed
Services Vocational Aptitude Battery Career Exploration Program. The
Commission also offers recommendations designed to strengthen
educational pathways to military service, including offering pre-
service education opportunities for enlisted personnel conditioned on a
military service commitment.
These expanded youth pathways and outreach efforts will
significantly increase engagement between the military and the broader
American public, provide a new generation of Americans with firsthand
information about military life, and promote an acceptance of military
service by all communities as a valued career choice. These outcomes
are essential to strengthening the resiliency of the U.S. military, and
securing our Nation.
Advancing Public Service
Securing our Nation extends beyond military service; public
servants are vital to the well-being of the Nation and increasingly
important to national security in an era of great power competition.
With integrity and impartiality, civil servants implement the decisions
of elected officials and administer programs that fundamentally enhance
our national security and improve the lives of Americans in countless
ways.
The Commission found significant challenges within Federal civil
service personnel systems. With just six percent of the Federal
workforce under age 30 and more than a third soon eligible to retire,
agencies must attract the next generation to public service employment.
Yet, basic hiring processes have become dysfunctional. Most agencies do
not have effective internship programs--hires of student interns
dropped by 90 percent, from 35,000 in 2010 to 4,000 in 2018. Benefits
are not competitive with the private sector, especially for those who
do not seek careerlong government employment. Congress and the
President have granted direct-hire authority to address critical hiring
needs, but the personnel system has not been updated with sustainable
solutions. The Commission would address these near-term problems so
agencies can function better now while building toward a modern talent-
management system, so the Federal Government is a competitive employer
in the long term.
To fix Federal hiring, the Commission proposes to transform
processes for recruiting applicants and assessing the qualifications of
job candidates, such as by eliminating self-assessments, engaging
subject-matter experts and hiring managers with subject-matter
expertise to rate candidates, and utilizing advanced online assessment
tools. The Commission also proposes setting competency standards and
improving training for human resources employees and encouraging
agencies to make full use of existing hiring authorities, such as by
creating new tools to connect qualified applicants eligible for
noncompetitive hiring with agency hiring managers.
Bold action is also needed to revitalize the hiring pipelines to
Federal agencies for students and recent graduates. At minimum, the
Federal Government needs robust internship and recent graduate hiring
programs. The Commission proposes reforming and expanding these
programs as well as creating new pathways, such as a Public Service
Corps that grants college scholarships in exchange for a 4-year public
service commitment at a Federal agency. Further, the Commission
proposes a new Federal Fellowship and Scholarship Center, which would
enhance developmental programs for students with critical skills and
leadership potential.
The Commission also considers it crucial to modernize how veterans'
preference works within the government's standard hiring process of
competitive examination. Veterans' preference is not working well for
younger veterans seeking to transition to civilian careers nor for
agencies that need to hire highly qualified workers. The current
preference does a disservice to veterans. Many veterans receive little
or no benefit, and the preference routinely advances candidates with
weak qualifications, because some veterans who are assessed as
minimally qualified based on their skills and experience are
automatically moved to the top of the best qualified list. As a result,
hiring managers are often presented with two suboptimal options: hiring
a veteran to a position for which they are not a strong fit, doing a
disservice to that veteran; or, having received a list of unqualified
candidates, return it without making a hire--which is now done on more
than half of all competitive service postings. At the same time,
noncompetitive hiring options, like the Veterans Recruitment
Appointment, are underutilized. The Commission proposes a comprehensive
overhaul that would make veterans' preference a tiebreaker between
equally qualified candidates and refocus the preference on recently
discharged veterans who are transitioning to civilian employment, while
expanding eligibility for the Veterans Recruitment Appointment from 3
years to 10 years after discharge. The Commission also proposes to
expand noncompetitive eligibility for national service alumni and
participants in Federal internship, fellowship, and scholarship
programs to leverage the skills of, and taxpayer investment in, these
individuals.
To attract and retain public servants with critical skills, the
Commission has recommended modernizing personnel systems for Federal
health care professionals, expanding special personnel systems for
cybersecurity professionals, piloting a Civilian Cybersecurity Reserve,
and investing in the skills of current Federal employees.
To foster long-term competitiveness of Federal personnel systems,
the Commission would offer Federal employees more benefit choices,
including an option with fully portable retirement benefits, and would
expand OPM's [Office of Personnel Management] demonstration authority
to test, refine, and adopt changes to Federal agency personnel systems.
These changes would help build the evidence base for broader
improvements to Federal personnel systems that increase competitiveness
while preserving a merit-based civil service.
Advancing National Service
Each year, the Federal Government supports more than 300,000
national service positions through the Corporation for National and
Community Service (CNCS), the Peace Corps, and programs at other
Federal agencies, such as YouthBuild. National service improves the
lives of participants and recipients, provides much-needed support for
local and nonprofit organizations, and creates more united, civically
engaged communities. Most importantly perhaps, national service members
and volunteers roll up their sleeves and help meet critical needs of
the Nation, such as providing disaster relief, combating the opioid
crisis, preserving parks and public lands, teaching and tutoring public
school students in low-resource communities, and more. Already,
national service is playing a critical role in how our Nation responds
to COVID-19. We believe growth of national service opportunities can
and should be an integral part of a sustained solution, as communities
across the country deal with the adverse impacts of this threat for
years to come.
Despite the known positive impacts to individuals and communities,
public awareness is one of the most significant barriers to expanding
and promoting greater investment and involvement in national service.
Most Americans do not know what national service is or how to get
involved, and new efforts are needed to boost awareness and
recruitment. The Commission's recommendations include means of
promoting awareness of CNCS opportunities, including AmeriCorps and
Senior Corps, and linking recruiting efforts between military and
national service, such that aspiring Americans who are ineligible for
either service can learn about other opportunities to serve the
country.
Americans who do aspire to dedicate themselves to a national
service program face challenges in finding available opportunities and
affording the experience. To make national service more accessible,
Congress should enhance existing infrastructure and grow national
service to 1 million annual participants by the year 2031. As one step
to achieving this goal, the Commission proposes to create a new
national service fellowship program administered by CNCS that would let
individuals choose where they want to serve--thus allowing more
community, faith-based, and other nonprofit organizations, especially
those in rural, tribal, or under-resourced areas, to benefit from the
commitment and energy of young Americans. As proposed by the
Commission, the fellowship program would be equitably distributed
across congressional districts and would ensure inclusion of young
Americans from tribal and low-income communities.
The Commission also found that the current living allowance can be
a barrier for Americans who want to participate in national service.
The Commission believes that every American should have the ability to
consider and experience the positive impacts of service. As such, the
Commission has recommended the AmeriCorps living allowance and Senior
Corps stipend should be increased to more accurately reflect geographic
cost-of-living expenses and rising inflation. Enhancing the Segal
AmeriCorps Education Award by making it tax exempt, increasing
flexibility in how it can be used, and matching it to the average cost
of annual in-state tuition at a public university will provide greater
choice and serve as a stronger, more attractive incentive as Americans
struggle to meet rising tuition costs and student loan debt.
elevating all forms of service
The Commission's review of military, national, and public service
illuminated the need for better coordination of service efforts among
the various disjointed agencies and organizations that perform
management and oversight. Despite the critical role of service in our
country, currently there is no single entity responsible for advancing
and coordinating service initiatives across the Federal Government--no
focal point for valuable cross-service initiatives, including ways to
attract individuals with critical skills to serve their communities and
the Nation. Establishing an interagency council within the Executive
Office of the President, chaired by a presidentially appointed, Senate-
confirmed official, would elevate all streams of service and provide a
forum for encouraging coordination, communication, and promulgation of
best practices across military, national, and public service as well as
advancing joint efforts to promote service.
The Commission also recognized that many service organizations,
across all forms of service, face challenges identifying candidates
interested in or eligible for service. As a result, the Commission
believes there is significant value in creating a platform that can
function as ``one-stop shop'' for service opportunities--a virtual
clearing house that could connect service organizations with potential
talent. After exploring several existing and previous models, the
Commission proposes an interactive online platform that would
consolidate opportunities in military, national, and public service.
This approach will expose Americans to a wider range of opportunities
and encourage them to explore different ways to serve their country. In
addition, the Commission has recommended that this platform incorporate
a mechanism for Americans to indicate their willingness to perform
military, national, or public service, generally as well as in
emergencies, and upload their qualifications. This would provide
service organizations a national roster to recruit from, allowing for
more proactive recruiting.
Finally, as the Commission traveled the country in search of ways
to engage more Americans in service, nearly every conversation or
meeting included a passionate call to improve civic education. Leaders
in military, national, and public service, as well as Americans from
all walks of life, stressed civic education's ability to increase
Americans' awareness of, aspiration for, and access to service and
recommended that the Commission develop ways to enhance and expand
civic education throughout the United States. The Commission also
believes it is necessary to significantly expand the practice of
service-learning--a teaching method that integrates classroom teaching
with community service. Research suggests that students who participate
in service-learning demonstrate better academic performance and a
deeper understanding of civic responsibility. To that end, the
Commission recommended that Congress make a significant financial
commitment to jump-start a nationwide revitalization of civic education
and service learning. The Commission believes that by appropriating
these funds, the Federal Government will lay the foundation to ensure
that students at all levels have access to high-quality civic education
and service-learning opportunities--from kindergarten to 12th grade,
and beyond.
Three and a half years ago, Congress charged our Commission with
something never done before: conduct a comprehensive and holistic
review of all forms of service to the Nation. In doing so, we saw
firsthand how service is a fundamental part of who we are as Americans,
and how we meet our challenges. COVID-19 represents one of the most
all-encompassing and unprecedented challenges in the history of the
United States. Yet the potential for service is currently untapped. By
igniting the extraordinary potential for service, our recommendations
will address critical national security and domestic needs, expand
economic and educational opportunities, unite our people in common
purpose, strengthen the civic fabric of the Nation, and establish a
robust culture of service. Bold action is needed. Incremental changes
and small improvements are not enough.
We call on Congress and the President to invest in the American
people and the security of the Nation by taking action. Now is the
time--and ``Inspired to Serve'' is the plan--to strengthen service and
achieve the vision of every American, inspired and eager to serve.
Chairman Reed. Well, thank you, Dr. Heck, for that very
compelling statement, and because some of our colleagues are
participating virtually, let me once again explain our
procedures.
Since it is impossible to know exactly when our colleagues
who will be joining via the computer arrive, we will not be
following our standard early bird timing rule. Instead, we
handle the order of questions by seniority, alternating sides,
until we have gone through everyone. Once we reach the end, if
there is anyone we missed we will start back at the top of the
list and continue until everyone has had their turn.
We will do the standard 5-minute rounds. I ask my
colleagues on the computers, and at their desks, to please keep
an eye on the clock, which you should see on your screens.
Finally, to allow for everyone to be heard, whether in the
room or on the computer, I ask all colleagues to please mute
your microphone when not speaking.
In addition, the Committee has received a statement for the
record from the Service Year Alliance, and I would request that
it be made part of the record. Without objection, it is part of
the record.
[The information referred to follows:]
[The statement from the Service Year Alliance can be found
on page 42.]
Chairman Reed. Thank you again, Dr. Heck, for your
compelling testimony and also for the extraordinary report that
you rendered, the ideas and the analysis you put forward. I can
assure you it will be carefully reviewed and we hope, in large
part, incorporated into the next national defense bill after
appropriate review and debate. But thank you. You have made a
significant contribution, you and your colleagues.
Let me ask a question, Dr. Heck. Do you believe that the
current accession standards and entrance testing methods are
appropriate to fuel the force we need over the next 25 years?
Dr. Heck. Thank you for the question, Mr. Chairman. The
Commission did not delve into the issue of actual accession
standards. We felt that the standards are best designed and
vetted through the Department of Defense. What we concentrated
on was how could we get more individuals interested in serving
in the military, with the belief that if more are interested
then regardless of what the standard is, more will meet the
standard and more will participate.
Chairman Reed. I recognize that. I think one of the
comments you made, and it tracks my thinking, is today there
are some military specialties much different than when I was
serving. To be a drone operator does not require some of the
same physical capacities of some other issues that it took to
be an infantry officer or a naval officer, et cetera. I think
you are right to point out that it should be considered by the
services, and we will look to them for their advice.
Ms. Wada, the question that has been raised about the
Commission, and again, in Dr. Heck's testimony, is how do we
increase the propensity of young people to serve in the
military? We have a shrinking cohort, so we have to do much
better. So your ideas, as a commissioner.
Ms. Wada. Certainly, sir. The Commission looked at how we
can better engage with the communities across this country, and
what we believe is that integrating all three lines of service
would actually open up opportunities to engage with young
Americans today. There are many communities in this country
that military recruiters are having a difficult time getting
into, but those same communities will welcome national service
opportunities. If we combined all the service lines so that we
provided educated, informed processes for our young Americans
to consider all lines of service, we believe that we could
increase propensity.
Chairman Reed. I think that is good advice, and more
collaboration between the national service reps
[representatives] and the military reps would be appropriate
and something that we will pursue.
I was struck when Senator Inhofe asked how to pronounce
your name. I was going to say it is easy. It is just like we
say in New England, ``Wada under the dam.'' Forgive me.
Mr. Khazei, we want to focus on expanding participation not
just in the military but through the charge that was given for
national and public service. Your experience with City Year
gives you a very special perspective. Can you talk to us about
how we can expand national and public service?
Mr. Khazei. Thank you, Chairman. Is it on now?
Chairman Reed. It is not on yet, sir.
Mr. Khazei. It is not going on. Sir, it is not going on.
Chairman Reed. You have got it now, I think.
Mr. Khazei. Is it on now?
Chairman Reed. You are on now.
Mr. Khazei. Sorry about that.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Khazei. Chairman, thank you for your question. As we
traveled the country we found that there was an incredible
desire to serve but a lot of people do not know about the
opportunities to serve, and so we made a number of
recommendations. One is that there should be a new call to
service, and as my colleague said, linking military, national,
and public service. We also think that there should be a new
portal, a technological website, a one-stop shop, where you can
learn about different opportunities to serve. We also think
that we need to increase the benefits, as was recently done in
the American Rescue Plan and is proposed in the CORE Act [Core
Opportunity Resources for Equity and Excellence], which I know
you are a co-sponsor of, for especially more low-income youth
to be able to serve. We made a number of recommendations.
We think that already there are more people who want to
serve than there are positions, but with the right national
strategy and a national call to service the desire to serve is
tremendous. Young people of this generation, Generation Z--my
daughter is one--are the most idealistic, they are the most
serving, but if they see that there are opportunities we
believe they will sign up in droves.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much. Just a final point. My
experience in trying to engage and encourage service, one of
the points with the schools systems, and particularly the
guidance counselors, do not seem to be as knowledgeable and
engaged as they should be, and that is something that you might
have touched on in the Commission report. But they are an asset
that is there. I would think that talking to students, letting
them know all the options of service, the options for
education, et cetera, my sense is that is the resource we have
not developed enough. So we will also consider that.
Once again, thank you for your superb work. Senator Inhofe.
Senator Inhofe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Commission's
report urges to create a widespread culture of service for
Americans, with all backgrounds, again, expect and inspired to
serve the Nation and all that. Now, Dr. Heck, in light of that,
what was the thinking behind the Commission's decision not to
recommend that Americans be required to serve the Nation in
some way? You know, in my opening statement I made it real
clear that it is something I would not have done, but I did,
and I had a happy ending. So what went into that decision?
Dr. Heck. Thank you, Senator Inhofe. While the Commission
believes in the value of service to individuals and the Nation
it ultimately concluded that policymakers should make every
effort to promote voluntary approaches to service, and this is
primarily looking at the intangible benefits that come with the
spirit of volunteerism. In addition, when you look at trying to
make service, in whatever form, mandatory, certainly for
military service there is a constitutional requirement under
Article I, Section 8, to raise and support armies, provide and
maintain navies. There was concern about constitutionality of
forcing individuals into other forms of service against their
will.
Perhaps a bigger issue, however, is the incumbent costs, if
you were to make mandatory service something that was a
universal requirement. Roughly 210 million adults in the U.S.
population today, we could not afford 210 million service
opportunities. We, again, go back to the importance of the
volunteer spirit in providing service, whether it is at the
local, State, or Federal level.
Senator Inhofe. Okay. I understand that. But in your
deliberation on that did you study what Israel has been doing
for so many years, and how successful, in my opinion, that has
been?
Dr. Heck. Yes, sir. We actually studied several foreign
nations and their systems that have some form of mandatory
service, and, in fact, met with representatives from their
respective embassies. Israel, sir, is a much smaller country in
population. In addition, if you talk to the Department of
Defense, they will echo the fact that at no point in time have
we had such a professional force as we have now, with an All-
Volunteer Force. There are concerns about rotating people in
for a 1-year conscription, putting them through boot camp, and
then having them leave the service.
Senator Inhofe. So you did consider that. Ms. Wada, I would
say one of the things that was probably most controversial in
your efforts was the decision that young women should be
required to register in the system alongside men. Was that
difficult? Did you have a lot of opposition to that position?
Ms. Wada. Thank you, Senator. The Commission did hear from
a number of organizations and individuals about the different
perspectives they brought. Ultimately, the Commission decided
that it was based on standards and that men and women are
equally qualified to meet----
Senator Inhofe. But was there opposition to that?
Ms. Wada. There was some. There was also a number of----
Senator Inhofe. Yeah, I would think there would be, and
frankly, I am glad you did.
Now the most important thing, in my opinion, is the problem
that we have got right now with the fact that such a small
percentage of our young people qualify. We have a Personnel
Subcommittee of this committee that you are before right now,
and this has probably been the thing that has been studied for
a long period of time, and even our military has a difficult
time coming up with--one of the choices would be to lower the
standards, one of the choices--there are a lot of little
obvious things that could be done.
But do you have anything that you have done that is going
to address the problem that we just do not have enough kids out
there?
Ms. Wada. The Commission looked at the number of
individuals who were qualified to meet the current accession
standards, and the Commission found that both men and women
were equally qualified to meet it, and that percentage was 29
percent. In actuality, it was 29 percent for males and it was
29.3 percent for females. So statistically, both men and women,
if they were called to register and potentially considered for
a draft, both men and women would be equally qualified to meet
the current accession standards.
Senator Inhofe. Well, Mr. Khazei, you know, that is fine,
but that is the problem that we are going to be facing. We have
China and we have Russia, know the capacities that they have.
Mr. Khazei, do you have any comments to make on that?
Mr. Khazei. Yes. I think one of our big recommendations is
that we need a new call to service overall, and the brilliance
of this Commission was that it links all three branches of
service--military, national, and public. I think if we had a
new almost updated ``Uncle Sam Needs You'' campaign, and gave
young people the option, and educated them about the different
choices, and if we linked to recruiting efforts, I think more
young people would sign up to serve in public service, military
service, and national service.
If I could just make one point quickly, Senator, about your
mandatory point. We had a robust debate on this. If you look at
the development of high school in America, it took about three
decades. The first high school was voluntary and then it got to
a critical mass and people said, ``You know what? Everybody
should go to high school.''
We have a robust recommendation which is to get to a
million young people in national service within 10 years. At
that point, it would be across the country enough that I think
we could have the debate that you want to have. Now, should we
make this mandatory? There is also the practical issue that if
you went from where we are now, which is less than 100,000
people, to 4 million, would the service opportunities be
quality service opportunities? We do not want people in service
where they are not having an impact.
So I think if the recommendation to get to 1 million is
adopted, then the country really could have the kind of debate
that you are pushing for.
Senator Inhofe. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Inhofe. Let me
recognize Senator Gillibrand via Webex.
Obviously we have a technical issue. Senator Blumenthal,
please.
Senator Blumenthal. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for your excellent work.
Senator Gillibrand. I thought they were calling on----
Chairman Reed. Senator Gillibrand, are you on Webex now?
You were not. Could I ask you to defer? We recognized Senator
Blumenthal and I will recognize you next, when your order comes
up. Thank you.
Senator Gillibrand. Yes, sir. Thank you.
Senator Blumenthal. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,
Senator Gillibrand.
This untapped opportunity is tremendously exciting, and
part of it is that we are recognizing for the first time as
public service folks who do seemingly ordinary tasks under
extraordinary challenges, whether it is postal workers or bus
drivers or grocery workers, because of the challenges that we
have faced over the last year in the midst of a pandemic. I am
particularly interested in what can be done in the military to
attract more women and keep them in the military. There is a
story in The New York Times, today, I think, about the physical
fitness tests that the military imposes. In the course of your
work did you develop any opinions about how that fitness test
impacts either attracting or retaining women in the military?
Ms. Wada. Senator, thank you for the question. No, the
Commission did not look at the--are you referring to the Army's
ACT [Army Combat Fitness Test], the new physical fitness?
Senator Blumenthal. Yes.
Ms. Wada. No. The Commission did not take a look at that
issue. The Commission did look, though, at how we could
increase propensity for individuals to serve, and what we found
was young individuals across this country lack basic knowledge
of the military and the opportunities that it provides. A lot
of young Americans today believe that the majority of people in
the military are what we would call ground-pounders or
infantrymen, not recognizing the fact that we have everything
from doctors to lawyers to musicians in the military, and they
have professional opportunities available to them, that they
are now well known.
Senator Blumenthal. Would you agree that educating them
about the specific skills that are necessary and also tailoring
military requirements to attract those skills, for example,
cyber warriors, who may have different interests, different
style, different culture, but the military needs them?
Ms. Wada. Correct. One of the issues that the Commission
looked at was how do we increase propensity for critical
skills, and we have included a number of recommendations to do
that. What I would say is that it is not only recruiting those
individuals with critical skills. It is also having the pathway
and also the processes to be able to keep them once they are
in, as well. So the process needs to be looked at holistically.
Senator Blumenthal. What about student loan forgiveness? Is
that an option here that should be expanded further?
Ms. Wada. We looked at benefits, in general. I do not
recall that we came out on any specific recommendation on
student loans, specifically.
Senator Blumenthal. Well, there is an option now to have
student loans forgiven. I hate that word, because it makes it
sound like an act of beneficence. But people who do public
service are actually contributing, and, in effect, paying off
their student loan. But one of the proposals that I and others
have advocated, that I think would be extremely attractive to
national service, is expanding the options that are available
so that people with huge amounts of student debt can better
reduce that debt in return for public service. That is not
something you have explored?
Ms. Wada. No. The Commission did include a recommendation
that would actually start a scholarship program and encourage
centers of excellence for public service, and start a
scholarship program on the national service level that would
allow people to choose where they want to provide their
service, and part of national service also comes with some
college stipend money, depending on the program.
Dr. Heck. Senator, if I may, so the committee does have a
recommendation to create a public service corps, similar to the
ROTC [Reserve Officers' Training Corps] program, where there
would be an up- front scholarship program in exchange for
someone agreeing to serve in a Federal public service role upon
graduation.
Senator Blumenthal. But what I am contemplating, in effect,
is, a reverse GI Bill, in effect, where someone does the public
service and can reduce the debt, not through a scholarship
while in school but through service afterwards. It already
exists but it is under pretty curtailed or limited
circumstances, and widening it, broadening it I think would
greatly encourage public service.
My time has expired. I apologize, but I would love to
follow up in questions. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Blumenthal. Let me
recognize Senator Ernst.
Senator Ernst. Thank you very much. It is good to have our
witnesses in front of us. Dr. Heck, great to see you. Ms. Wada,
thank you, and Commissioner, thank you as well for the great
service that you have provided with this study.
It is good to be able to visit with you today. There are a
number of issues out there. I think all of us will have
different views on whether women should be included in the
draft. I am okay with that, since we have opened up those
combat skills to women serving in the military. I do think that
that is entirely appropriate. I am very proud of the 23-plus
years that I had in boots, and am very excited that my daughter
has decided to follow in my footsteps and put those boots on as
well.
So just going to the civic education of our young men and
women. One thing from back home that I have been very surprised
about is that many of our school counselors do not even offer
the opportunity, when they are reviewing scholarships with
their high school students, many of them do not bring up the
fact that ROTC offers scholarships to any number of our fine
higher learning institutes. I find that very discouraging that
we are not opening that opportunity to so many. Even my
daughter had said, at one point, she had heard one counselor
say, ``Oh, well, we do not go over that because nobody will be
interested.'' Well, you do not know that those students are not
interested unless you actually propose it to them.
I also know of a number of high schools across Iowa that do
not allow National Guard recruiters to come into their schools,
and I think this is a great disservice by our public high
schools when they are not offering career choices of varying
degrees to their students.
I would hope that those that are listening out there might
decide that, wow, we are cutting careers away from our students
by not offering that opportunity. Whether they agree with
military service or not, it is not up to our schools to decide
what career path our students engage in. Hopefully we can bring
that to light as well.
Now there was a Brookings report from June of 2020 that
stated, and I do agree, that ``Americans' participation in
civic life is essential to sustaining our democratic form of
government. Without it, a government of the people, by the
people, and for the people will not last.'' This report found
that one in four Americans were unable to name the three
branches of government, and this report, admittedly, shocked
me.
How can we reinvigorate civic education within our schools
and amongst our Nation's youth, and then, of course, just
understanding our democracy is very important and critical in
today's society. We struggle with this issue, but how can we
get more of that civic engagement in our high schools? Any of
you, please.
Mr. Khazei. Senator, thank you for your service, and your
daughter's, and highlighting this issue. Just to respond
somewhat to what you said, we did recommend that JROTC [Junior
Reserve Officers' Training Corps] should be expanded and that
part of the curriculum should also include opportunities to
serve in public service and civilian national service, and we
appreciate that this committee actually put that instruction in
your last NDAA, and now hopefully JROTC will be expanded as
well.
You are absolutely right about civics. The most recent NAEP
[National Assessment of Educational Progress] test on civics
found that only 25 percent of our eighth-graders are
proficient. There is a lot we can do. As our chairman said, we
did not expect--civics was not on our initial mandate, but
everywhere we went across the country people raised the same
concern that you have raised, which is that we have to restore
civics in schools. So we have recommended that there be a new
civics fund created at the Department of Education (DOE), $200
million a year, both for teacher training in civics and to
bring civics programs back in.
Just today, in a bipartisan way, Senator Cornyn and Senator
Coons and Congresswoman DeLauro and Blumenauer and Cole are
introducing the Secure American Democracy Through Civics Act.
There is a new coalition, Educating for Democracy. Three
hundred scholars put out a roadmap last week, and that
legislation will put $1 billion over 5 years.
We have also proposed that we restore service learning
schools, so that kids can have the experience of doing
community service in an educational context. Basically, we
agree with your concern, and this has to start in first grade
and go all the way through high school, so that young people
are exposed to what our country means, how the system of
government works, what their rights and responsibilities are,
but then also have the chance to do service themselves as they
are going through the education system.
Senator Ernst. Fantastic. My time has expired, but I do
appreciate the great service that you have given on this
Commission. I think it is important that we all take a very
hard look at it and look at your recommendations and how we
might follow through. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Ernst. Let me recognize
Senator Gillibrand via Webex.
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you to
the witnesses for this excellent presentation. I think your
report is ground-breaking, and I think the greatest asset this
Nation has always had is its people. On the Armed Services
Committee I have worked very hard to make sure the kids that
apply for the service academies are more diverse than would
naturally occur.
I want to hear your recommendations. You outlined in the
report that you want to increase the number of candidates of
color, you want to increase the number of even people with
disabilities, people who have been previously incarcerated, to
expand national public service to everyone, and you want to not
only expand who is applying but who actually is given the
roles.
Can you speak a little bit too how you intend to do this
and how we can reach out to these communities more effectively?
Ms. Wada. Well, the Commission, one of the ideas that we
have had is to do allow people to have scholarships that they
would be able to take into different communities to be able to
do that. We also want to increase the opportunities for
national service in communities of underserved populations. To
be able to do that, we have to increase the stipends and also
the positions available.
What the Commission found was there are a number of
barriers to service, and even including not just national
service barriers but also military service barriers. Education
is one of them. In a number of underserved communities it may
not just be the fact that they have physical or mental waiver
requirements but it also sometimes is the educational
attainment that they are not able to achieve, which becomes a
barrier to military service in some of these underserved
communities.
Senator Gillibrand. A little more to the question that
Senator Blumenthal raised, to basically have an expansion of
the GI Bill so that people can do public service after high
school or college and commit to a certain amount of public
service in exchange for having student debt paid down to a
certain degree or to receive a public education.
Dr. Heck. Yes, Senator. We did propose that the Segal award
that the AmeriCorps members receive, get increased equal to 1
year of in-state tuition. When it was first proposed, back in
1994 when it came into existence, it covered a year. It was
raised to the level of Pell grants in the Serve America Act of
2009, but it still is less than a year. So we think if you
could do a year of service and get a year of in-state tuition,
you could serve your way through higher education.
Ms. Wada. Senator, I would also add the Commission had a
recommendation where we recommended that the military provide
training prior to entrance of military service. If you, say,
wanted to get your truck driver CDL [commercial driver's
license] license that you would be able to go to get your CDL
license prior to joining the military, and then have a service
commitment that way as well. It is a tangible achievement that
an individual could have prior to making the commitment to
serve.
Senator Gillibrand. Would you recommend for each year you
agree for service to have a year of education paid for? So, for
example, if you agreed to 4 years of service you would get a 4-
year degree, if you agreed to 2 years of service you would get
a 2-year degree? Is that the investment we should make to try
to encourage more Americans, particularly those who are most
underserved in the underserved communities to look at service
as a stepping stone for their career?
Mr. Khazei. Yes, absolutely. In fact, our recommendation is
that the post-service Segal award should be equivalent to 1
year of in-state tuition at a public university so you could do
exactly what you said. If you served for 2 years you get 2
years of education, or for 4 you get 4 years. You could
essentially serve your way to higher education.
Senator Gillibrand. Expand your views on particularly this
very unique population of those who have been previously
incarcerated. That is the group of people that I have
legislated on in terms of urban jobs legislation, to try to get
them job training. This would be a very directed approach to
try to get everyone to be fully employed, who want to be
employed, through this kind of training and public service.
Mr. Khazei. Absolutely. In fact, we recommended there are
service programs like YouthBuild, Green City Force, that have
brought young people who were formerly incarcerated, very
successful. One of our recommendations is that the Corporation
of National Service should look at more opportunities for
people who have been formerly incarcerated. It is a great
transition to do national service. We recommended that.
Senator Gillibrand. I would assume that it would be wise to
expand the definition of public service to include, of course,
the military, but also our intelligence services, also all
government service, health care, education, and green jobs.
Could you see this expanding that far, to all public service?
Dr. Heck. Senator, for the purposes of the Commission we
defined public service as employment in either State, local,
Tribal, or Federal Government positions, but many of the
recommendations that we do make are able to be extrapolated to
other forms of service as well.
Senator Gillibrand. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Gillibrand. Let me
recognize Senator Kaine.
Senator Kaine. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member. To
the members of the Commission, congratulations. I really look
forward to digging into this.
National service is so important. When I was a kid in law
school I took a year off to help run a vocational school in
Honduras, and it was transformative. I was the oldest of three
boys. Because I had that experience and it was transformative,
my younger brother took a year off between college and med
[medical] school to work for a center for refugees in Houston,
and then my youngest brother took a year off between college
and law school to work at a homeless shelter and ministry with
the homeless in Richmond. These were all informal, there was
not a government program, there was no incentives or benefits,
but each of us found that to be transformative in our lives.
Two of my three children have done more formal public service.
One is a member of the United States Marine Corps and one with
AmeriCorps.
There are a lot of questions I want to ask, but let me just
ask this one. I think the current way we do public service, or
try to incentivize public service, is highly confusing. Just to
use the example of the various public service loan forgiveness
programs. Senator Gillibrand and I have a bill called the What
You Can Do For Your Country Act that basically tries to
streamline and pull together the various different public
service loan programs that we have. I am a member of the
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee and it is in
our jurisdiction there.
We have incentives for military service. I saw an ad on TV
[television] this morning that said sign up for the Navy, up to
$40,000 signing bonus. We have programs to encourage students
in schools if they want to study cyber, either to work on the
civilian side or the military side. We have a variety of other
public service loan programs for physicians or health workers
if they work in underserved areas. But we also often face a
situation where people are confused by the rules and they get
into the wrong repayment program, and they think they are going
to get their loan forgiven and then find out that that is not
the case.
The previous administration, at the Department of
Education, was very, very customer-unfriendly in trying to get
people into the right programs so they could get their loans
forgiven. They even stated a philosophical objection to the
programs. One of the key officials at the DOE said, ``Why would
we want to give an incentive to work in public service rather
than an incentive to work in the private sector?"
Do you have recommendations in here about the way we can
take the variety of programs that Congress has done to provide
incentives for people to go into different kinds of public
service and (a) make them more streamlined, and (b) communicate
them better so that students and their families, as they are
thinking about their future, have this information at their
hands as they make decisions?
Dr. Heck. Senator, thank you. Great question. We do have a
series of recommendations through each one of the topic areas--
military, national, and public--as well as cross-cutting
recommendations on how do we tie them all together. Our
recommendations revolve really around three areas: awareness,
aspiration, and access. You cannot be what you do not know. We
have to make sure people are aware of the opportunities that
are out there for them. Once they are aware, they need to
aspire to want to participate, and then we have to make sure
they have a program.
We feel that one of the best ways to do that is to create
the online platform, kind of a national service clearinghouse
online platform, where all forms of service are there--
military, national, and public service--that outline what the
responsibilities are, what the benefits are. In this way,
somebody does not need to go through a series of websites to
try to figure out what they want to do and what might work best
for them.
Certainly, many of the recommendations we concentrated on
to increase national service participation look at that
benefits package. My colleague mentioned one which was the
Segal award and pegging it to 1 year of in-state tuition as
opposed to the Pell grant. Another is looking at the living
stipend, to make sure that the living stipend is sufficient to
allow that person to participate. Right now there is very
little wiggle room in setting that number, and obviously it is
a different cost of living in downtown New York versus in a
rural state.
We have several recommendations to try to address those
areas, and to have this cross-cutting approach, to make sure
that regardless of what line of service an individual is
interested in that they will be supported in that line of
service.
Senator Kaine. I very much appreciate it, and Alan, in
particular, it is great to see you again. Thanks for your great
work for so many years in advancing the idea of public service.
I look forward to following up on your recommendations and I
appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Kaine. Let me now call on
Senator King via Webex.
Senator King. Senator, thank you very much. I am in the
hall of Dirksen between two meetings. Most of the comments and
questions have been already presented to the committee this
morning. The necessity--necessity--of greater civic education I
do not think can be overestimated. I think one of the great
losses, and I do not really quite understand why it has
happened in the last 30 or 40 years, has been the decline of
civics, literally civics, in the high school curriculum around
the country.
A couple of other questions. Does the Commission have an
estimate of the number of 18-year-olds in the country--if we
are talking about 2 years, 18- and 19-year-olds, how many
people are we talking about, for example?
Mr. Khazei. Senator, we completely agree with you on the
issue of civics, and that is why we have recommended a new
civics fund at the Department of Education, $200 million a
year, and are excited about the new legislation that is being
introduced today in a bipartisan fashion.
You know, right now the Federal Government spends about $5
million a year on civics, and spends over $3 billion on STEM
[Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics]. When the
government committed to investing in STEM, STEM accelerated all
across the country. We think the same commitment should be made
in civics. We heard it everywhere we went, people raised the
same concern you did.
There are roughly 4 million young people that turn 18 every
single year, so in terms of 18- and 19-year-olds, there would
be about 8 million.
Senator King. That is not a gigantic number in terms of
providing some kind of national service option.
Now another question is, is this a question of
communication, where people do not know the availability of
these slots, or are there not enough slots? In other words, do
we need more slots in AmeriCorps or the military or the other
places where national service might take place, or is it just a
question of there are fewer people applying and therefore if we
advertised more and made people aware of these options we would
have more participation? Which is it, communications or
shortage of slots?
Mr. Khazei. It is a little of both. There is definitely a
shortage of slots. AmeriCorps is roughly 75,000 people a year,
Peace Corps is about 7,000, and YouthBuild about 8,000. So
there are less than 100,000 slots for that cohort, as you
mentioned, 4 million, 8 million people, and there is way more
demand. There are programs all across the country that have way
more people applying. The corporation gets requests for funding
that far exceeds that grant authority. We recommended that
there should be enough funding to get to 1 million people a
year over 10 years.
But there is also a question of when. As we traveled the
country, we found that very few people knew about AmeriCorps
and the opportunity to serve. So we think there needs to be
both, and including people who have misgivings or
misunderstandings about the military, as my fellow Commissioner
Wada mentioned. So we did think there should be a new call to
service that would link all three streams of service, as well
as increased support, especially on the civilian service side.
Senator King. I have to say I was----
Mr. Khazei. Thank you for your leadership on the CORE Act,
which would do that.
Senator King. Well, that is exactly what we are hoping will
happen.
I have to say, I was somewhat amused by the new idea of
service in exchange for a year of college scholarship. My
mother did that in the '20s. She had a scholarship to William
and Mary in Virginia, and for every year of her scholarship she
was committed to teach for a year, in the commonwealth of
Virginia. So this is back to the future. I think that might
make a huge difference, either on the front end or the back
end. You can do the service before you go to school and earn
credits towards your school, or financial support towards your
schooling, or at the end of your schooling you can do a service
job and have a year of your costs forgiven. So I think it makes
sense. It worked 100 years ago and I suspect it may work.
Thank you so much for the work of this Commission. I think
it is timely and important, and I think you are going to find a
receptive audience here in the Capitol, just as you already
have today. So thank you for the great work on the Commission.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator King, and let me now
recognize Senator Blackburn via Webex.
Senator Blackburn. Thank you so much. I appreciate that and
I appreciate that you all are with us.
I think that we are all really aware of the changing nature
of warfare and the fighting that is going to take place in the
domains of space and cyber. In the Commission's final report
you recommend developing new voluntary models for assessing
personnel with critical skills. How do your findings support
the military framework like a national Reserve digital corps,
which leverages the STEM workforce and national service?
Dr. Heck. Thank you, Senator Blackburn. One of our
recommendations is the formation of a civilian cybersecurity
Reserve force that is made up of individuals who have
previously served in the U.S. Government as cybersecurity
experts, have left Federal Government but are willing to
participate for surge capacity in the event of a national
emergency.
We see that, coupled with the specific critical skills
individual ready Reserve (IRR), which is an opportunity for
individuals without any prior military experience to be able to
volunteer their critical skill set in times of a national
emergency, and both of those are listed and fleshed out in our
recommendations.
Senator Blackburn. Yeah. What about building this out
through the National Guard or through the ROTC or Junior ROTC
programs?
Dr. Heck. Well, we do look at Junior ROTC and the expansion
thereof as another pathway to introduce individuals to
potential service in the military. We also talk about expanding
the utilization of the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude
Battery Career Exploration Program, ASVAB/CEPT, which right now
only about 15 percent of high school students participate in.
That is not just about getting them in a pathway to the service
but helping them determine where their skill set is for what
they might want to do as a career or as a trade, regardless of
whether or not they enter into the military. But JROTC is
really a citizenship program more than a military program.
Within senior ROTC at college levels there are the
opportunities for individuals to engage in specific high-STEM
level and cybersecurity programs. Those should be expanded.
The key, we believe, is having more individuals that are
not already in the military pipeline being exposed to and
interested in providing service in this field. Hence, the
critical skills IRR and the cybersecurity Reserve program.
Senator Blackburn. Well, I tell you, I think the DOD
studies that show only 29 percent of today's youth are eligible
or interested in military service, that is something that
should be of tremendous concern for us. When you talk about
citizenships programs, yes, they are important because that is
how people are going to develop that desire, whether it is
scouting programs or Junior ROTC, or some of those that build
that awareness. I think also using the National Guard so that
individuals who are working in some of the cyber and digital
fields have the ability to bring their skills to the military
service, and with it bring that innovation. I really think that
is a very important component.
This means that the National Guard, the Reserve, and our
Active Duty military, everyone needs to change some of their
recruiting practices. Don't you think?
Dr. Heck. Most definitely, ma'am. We have an entire section
dedicated to how the military needs to adapt its recruiting
methods to reach the potential recruits where they live and
where they are, especially with expanding hometown recruiting
programs, multiyear budgeting for the advertising budgets so
they can plan out an advertising blitz, making sure that they
are getting to individuals on the social media platforms that
they are on. If you are still advertising on TV to a
millennial, you are not advertising to that millennial.
Senator Blackburn. Right. Absolutely. Thank you so much. I
yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator, and let me
recognize Senator Kelly, please.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Dr. Heck and
Ms. Wada and Mr. Khazei, thank you to all of you for working on
this Commission. I come from a family of public servants. Both
my parents were police officers. When I was 18 years old, I
went to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. I spent 25 years in
the Navy and at NASA [National Aeronautics and Space
Administration]. Now I am here in the Senate, continuing public
service, because I feel there is no better way you can spend
your time than trying to improve our Nation, and fight for what
is right and help our neighbors, whether that is in the
military or in the government or in some other form of service.
Engaging Americans in some form of national service is an
important way of addressing divisions in our country and
emerging from our current crisis stronger and more united.
Certain moments in our country's history have galvanized
generations and called them to serve. I think 9/11 is an
example of this. There have been others, and that is sometimes
military service. It is sometimes other forms of Federal
service. You know, then there are other events, events like the
SolarWinds hack, which remind us how important certain critical
skill areas will continue to be for our government. It also
calls to mind scenarios that could require us to surge external
support on a short notice.
I understand the Commission considered a range of ways to
identify individuals with critical skills. Can you speak to
your findings on the different approaches there, and then I
have a follow-up question. Dr. Heck?
Dr. Heck. Thank you, Senator. Yeah, so we explored various
ways to try to encourage those with critical skills to become
involved and how we could identify those individuals, starting
with actually looking at a critical skills draft, if it was
necessary. There is a health care professional delivery system
model that is a subset of the currently existing Selective
Service System, where they would draft health care
professionals in times of war. So that model could be expanded
to other skill sets if we were at a point where we were in
conflict and needed to go to conscription.
However, as you well know, there are many conflicts that
will be short of conscription where we still may need to tap
into this expertise. That, again, goes back to the concept of a
critical skills individual ready Reserve, where individuals
with no military experience have the opportunity to sign up and
participate in an individual capacity in the times of need.
Some training, once a year, perhaps a stipend to be engaged,
and then be called on when needed. We specifically focused on
the cybersecurity Reserve force, which takes individuals that
have already worked in the government in that field, and have
received some of the best training and have already got the
clearances, but have left the government service to be able to
be a Reserve force to call back in, to serve in times of need.
Those types of programs can be extrapolated across any
critical skill. In fact, one of our charges was to identify
potential critical skills. What we realized when we started is
that it is impossible to predict the future, and what is a
critical skill today may not be a critical skill 10 years from
now. So we did not specifically lay out which skills need to be
addressed, but identified models that would work, depending
upon what the policymakers believed the critical skills were
for a given point in time.
Senator Kelly. So in the cyber field you look at
individuals that already served in government that had specific
skills that had clearance. Was there any thought given to try
to attract to that same community possibly younger people that
never served in government but often do have a certain set of
skills that they acquired on their own, and could also be part
of a larger effort when we need some sort of surge capability
in the cyber arena?
Dr. Heck. Yes, sir. That is the concept behind our critical
skills individual ready Reserve, which is not limited to any
critical skill. That would be for, in this case, in your
example, additional cyber experts that possessed that critical
capability to sign up in an individual ready Reserve process
that is not military related. It is not military service. It is
an opportunity to serve in that capacity when needed.
Senator Kelly. Do you have any idea if there would be
enough interest to make a program like that worthwhile?
Dr. Heck. Hard to predict what the interest would be, but
we did find, as we traveled around the Nation and talked with
people of all walks of life, that there are many people
interested in providing service in their State, local, and
Federal Government communities, short of wanting to put on a
uniform. Especially when you talk to folks who want to be able
to serve but serve where they live, and I think that is where
the opportunity for a program like this would show benefit.
Senator Kelly. Thank you, Dr. Heck.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Kelly. Let me recognize
Senator Sullivan.
Senator Sullivan. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and General,
good to see you again sir. Congratulations to you and the whole
committee for doing this. You and I have been in touch on your
work for some time now. I am really glad to see the hard work
paid off here, and I am glad to see the committee is holding a
hearing on this.
I wanted to ask kind of a question that is not really
related but it came up last week in our confirmation hearing
for the Under Secretary of Policy. We were talking about an
issue, and, I think you know, from your own service, that the
military is not a perfect institution but I think in America it
is certainly well respected. I think most people see it as one
of the most important, in many ways, civil rights institutions,
given how it is integrated, different ethnic groups throughout
our country. In the Marine Corps nobody cares what race you are
in. They just care how good of a marine you are. That is the
ethic that we all want throughout our Nation. I think it goes
to the idea of common service too.
We had an Under Secretary nominee up for his position,
Under Secretary of Policy, who declared that there was, quote,
``systemic racism within the ranks of the military.'' That was
his quote. I questioned him on it, and I said, ``That is a
pretty broad statement here to be making. Do you have any data
to back that up?'' He did not.
So I am just wondering, first, very quickly, and maybe you
can just say yes or no, in all your meetings with the military
and communities and people who have served and others, did you
see any actual data that there is systemic racism within the
ranks of the military?
Dr. Heck. Senator, thank you for the question. As we
traveled the Nation and talked with officers and enlisted, as
well as the general public, the one thing that resonated was
the fact that people want an opportunity to serve, especially
in the military. When you look at bringing people together, as
we do in military training, they leave that training looking at
each other, to their left and right, and calling each other
``brother'' and ``sister.'' When you bring people together in a
civilian job training program they leave calling each other
``colleague.'' I think that speaks volumes to what bringing
people together in a common cause like service can accomplish.
Senator Sullivan. Yeah, that has been my experience as
well. Again, not a perfect organization by any means, but to
make that statement here without any data to me was kind of
shocking.
Let me turn to actually your report. This idea of critical
skills lists in the IRR, I have been working on legislation
that relates to that with regard to public health, particularly
as it relates to what we have just been going through, a
pandemic where, God forbid we have another one, but we probably
are at some point in our history, and to be able to surge young
men and women who have critical skills for example, in health
care. You are a general in the Army. You are the chairman of
this Commission. You also know a lot about health care. I
wonder what you think about that idea.
Then I was surprised to see that in a number of your
critical skills list ideas, as I am looking through the report,
the Pentagon is opposing the recommendations that you are
putting forward. Could you talk about that idea of a surge IRR
capacity, if we had another big pandemic, young men and women
who have training in health care can be recalled, public health
service, military combination, and why that could be important,
but also why do you think the Pentagon opposes those kind of
ideas?
Dr. Heck. Senator, first, I wholly support the concept of
health care professionals being included within the critical
skills requirement, and certainly the programs that we
recommend could include health care professionals to surge. I
think the important point that we try to make in the critical
skills IRR, and perhaps IRR was not an artful term to use, and
it may cause some angst or confusion. But we look at it as an
opportunity for those with no prior military experience. As you
know, the current IRR is those military members that are
waiting to complete their military obligation with really no
requirement to perform any service, but are still subject to
recall. I believe that is one of the issues that DOD has, and
maybe more with the name than it is with the program, also to
ensure that it does not count against their end-strength caps,
which they are already constrained by.
Senator Sullivan. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you very much, Senator Sullivan. We do
not anticipate a second round, but I have a question and then I
will yield to the ranking member for his question. If others
join us in the interim then they will be recognized.
Again, you have done a superb job. One of the issues that
you raised was the less-than-representative composition of the
military today, through recruiting efforts, et cetera, and that
cuts both geographically and other categories, race and gender,
perhaps. Can you give us an idea, Dr. Heck, General Heck--I
will use both--of what are the factors that are driving it. Is
it an inattention to areas or groups? Is it just we have always
done it that way? Go ahead, please.
Dr. Heck. Sir, again, a great question. There are several
factors that weigh into this issue. One, which was previously
discussed briefly, is the growing civil-military divide where
individuals just do not think about wanting to serve in
uniform. We know that roughly 60 percent of recruits today come
from a small band of States through the South and the West. We
know that military service is becoming a family business. I
served because my mother served, my father served.
Part of this is the growing disconnect. The other thing
that Ms. Wada had mentioned earlier is how are the services
getting their message out to the population. All services are
doing a much better job now, but previously the advertisements
all were the high-speed, you know, low-drag MOS's [military
occupational specialties], rappelling out of helicopters,
kicking in doors, which is not where the large majority of
today's population is. But when you start advertising the
opportunity to be a physician, to be a nurse, to be a cyber
professional, to be a cook, to be a truck driver, we need to
concentrate more on the positions that are not combat related.
As you know, less than one-third of the positions in the Army,
even less across the services, are considered ground combat
positions, yet that seems to be what we advertise for.
Another piece, I believe, is the actual way we provide the
opportunity for males to register with the Selective Service.
It is a passive process. They go in to get their driver's
license and a box is checked and they are registered with the
Selective Service, not realizing the solemn obligation that
they just undertook and the gravity of the situation which may
call upon them to potentially risk their lives in service to
this Nation. All part of the growing civ-mil [civil-military]
divide, and that is where we need to tackle this issue.
Chairman Reed. Well, thank you very much, Dr. Heck.
Senator, are you ready?
Senator Inhofe. Oh yeah. I will make this real quick. We
have one more presenter here. But do not misinterpret what I
said about my having been a product of the draft. I have to
admit that I disagree with you on that, and yet I am realistic
enough to know that since I am the only member of this
committee who believes in compulsory service, it ain't going to
happen. But I would just say it happened in a great, beneficial
way to me and my life. Okay?
Chairman Reed. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman, and you and I
might be the only persons here that actually were subject to
signing up for the draft.
Senator Hawley, please.
Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
the witnesses for being here.
Dr. Heck, let me start with you. Missouri, as you know, is
the proud home of Fort Leonard Wood and Whiteman Air Force Base
and a number of other military installations of which we are
very proud. So in my state there is a strong-felt connection
between local communities all across the state and the United
States military, and between the ethic and the tradition of
service and local communities. But that is, to your point just
a second ago, that is not the case in many parts of the
country.
So give us a sense of what you think the most important
steps are that we can take, think about taking, to reconnect
those communities, geographic areas of the country that
increasingly have no regular contact with, no felt sense of
camaraderie with the military way of life. What can we do to
reconnect those things? Also as part of that, to build a shared
national sense of identity, which I think is an important part
of this.
Dr. Heck. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I will take
it two different pathways. First is how the Department of
Defense actually goes about recruiting, and although they are
making inroads and putting more resources into northeastern and
midwestern urban areas, which are historically areas that are
difficult to recruit from, that is the first step. The other
piece that we think is critically important is the expansion of
a program called Hometown Recruiting. If you want to get
somebody from a specific high school, a specific town to sign
up, the best way to do that is to send a graduate of that high
school to go talk to that class. Right now, Hometown Recruiting
is done via permissive TDY [temporary duty assignment]. So you
are home on vacation or on leave, you can do it. You get no
benefit from doing it. It is just doing it out of service. We
believe that should be funded, that you should send that person
home on a true TDY tour, and pay them their travel and their
per diem while they are home on leave, to be able to do that.
The other piece goes to the bigger issue that we face with
the civ-mil [civil-military] divide writ large. While you have
an excellent situation in Missouri, as you mentioned, it is not
the same way. Part of it is, post-9/11 we closed down our bases
from a security standpoint, which makes it harder for the
general population to get on base and interact with members in
the military. Also from a security perspective, the military
has become more insular. So we are shopping on base, we go to
church on base, we golf on base. We are not getting out into
the community as much as we should, just in normal, everyday
life, and that also contributes to the growing disconnect.
We need to address those issues that tend to continue to
grow the civ-mil divide, and we need to target our recruiting
resources in a much more focused way on how we can recruit,
attract, and retain those individuals.
Senator Hawley. Very good. Thank you for that. Ms. Wada, do
you want to add anything to that?
Ms. Wada. No. I would also say that we need to ensure that
when we are recruiting we are using the latest advertising
platforms, right. One of the recommendations we made was to
give them a multiyear recruiting budget, so that when they do
buy their spend at the beginning of the year they are able to
more effectively buy ads, particularly when we talk about
social media platforms, and how you best engage with the
younger generation, the Gen Zs, actually, at this point, that
we are looking for.
Senator Hawley. Yeah. Very good. Thank you. Let me ask you,
Ms. Wada, I will start with you on this. General Milley
recently said that--he has said this a lot, actually--that the
character of warfare is changing, and he spoke in particular
about the role of the advanced technologies on the battlefield,
that is speeding and changing the pace of warfare, and is
changing the way that we fight, all across the board, in every
sense. How should the Selective Service System, in your view,
change to reflect these changes in the way that our military,
and other militaries across the world, are now fighting?
Ms. Wada. So the Commission did not make any
recommendations on how we change who we register except for the
expansion of women. The individual requirements that the
Department or the services will need in the future will be
determined at that point in time, when we are facing that
existential threat.
So what we said was to ensure that we have the most
qualified individual in this country able to be chosen for or
participate in a draft that we expand Selective Service to
women, and that way we would have the best-qualified
individuals available to be potentially available for a draft.
Senator Hawley. Very good. Dr. Heck, do you have anything
to add on that point?
Let me ask you this. I have got just a few seconds
remaining. For any of you, the Commission's report mentions,
and you just mentioned this, Dr. Heck, a moment ago, to the
chairman, that unless there is a family member or a close
friend who has served, most Americans simply are not aware of
the various service opportunities. I am sure they are aware of
the United States military but they are not aware of what that
would actually mean, tangibly. How did we get to this point, do
you think? I mean, how have we reached this point, and what are
the most common reactions you received or heard about when
talking to young people about the U.S. military?
Ms. Wada, go ahead.
Ms. Wada. I like to tell the story about the young kids
that we met with here in Washington that came from Wisconsin. I
asked them, ``How many of you were interested in serving in the
military?'' and maybe in the group of ten, three hands went up.
So I asked them, ``Why did you choose not to join the military,
or not consider joining the military?'' The first response,
from the majority of kids in the room was, ``My parents would
kill me, because they expect me to go to college.''
Then I said, ``Well, how are you going to pay for college?
Is your college paid for?'' Ninety percent of the room, ``No,
it is not paid for. I don't know how I will go to college.'' I
said, ``Well, do you know that the military provides college
opportunities? You can go through ROTC if you went to a
college. You can get a ROTC scholarship. You can go and serve
for 4 years as an enlisted, get college paid for.'' They had no
idea.
But what struck me was one young gentleman said, ``I really
wanted to join the military but I wanted to go into finance,''
and I said, ``Do you know that there are finance opportunities
in the military?'' I said, ``My brother was a finance officer
in the United States Marine Corps.'' This look of shock that
that is even a possibility had never occurred to most of the
people in that room.
What we found when we went across the country is that is
actually the norm. That is not an anomaly. So we need to do a
better job in educating and providing opportunities for young
Americans when they are at that point in time, and we have been
told that is at middle school, to be able to have those
conversations of if you want to be X, this is all the pathways
to get there. That is why we recommend a one-stop shop through
a website that would allow people to do that.
Senator Hawley. Very good. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Hawley. Now we recognize
Senator Duckworth via Webex.
Senator Duckworth. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to
thank the Commission for their work and their recommendations
today. In particular, I want to highlight one quote from the
report that stands out to me, because it describes why national
service is a fundamentally American idea. I quote, ``Americans
who repeatedly step up in support of each other, offering their
sweat and ingenuity when needed, without being asked and
without expectation of anything in return,'' end quote. I think
that speaks volumes as to the ways military families serve
alongside their servicemembers, and often go above and beyond
what military families are asked to do. Yet spouses and other
family members face hurdles to education, unemployment, and can
find themselves isolated from their extended family and support
network.
Dr. Heck, I understand that for your work with the
Commission you engaged with military families to get a better
perspective on how they view or participate in service to their
communities. Can you speak to the potential impact of a program
that would provide service opportunities specifically to
military family members, giving them the opportunity to serve
in their communities and gain skills and accreditations, or
even for progress towards educational opportunities or even
some grant funding, sort of an AmeriCorps kind of an idea but
for military families?
Dr. Heck. Thank you for the question, Senator Duckworth.
Certainly the Commission looks at elevating all forms of
service with an eye towards growing national service
opportunities across the board. So if there was to be a segment
of that growth targeted towards military families that would
still achieve the goal that the Commission has of having one
million people in national service annually by 2031.
Certainly for the points that you mentioned, military
families sacrifice and serve just as much, sometimes if not
more, than the individual wearing the uniform. They suffer when
they move, constant PCS [permanent change of station] moves,
base to base, inability to maintain employment, get a good
education. So providing them national service opportunities
also goes to the ability for them to serve in their local
community or on their post, camp, or station, to care for their
brothers and sisters in arms.
That was something that we heard as we traveled around the
country and spoke to individuals about service. There are a lot
of people who want to serve, but they may not want to, Peace
Corps outside the country. They may not want to do AmeriCorps
in an underserved community in a different state. They want to
serve where they live, and take care of their neighbors, and
this is a great example of how we could grow service, open up
opportunities, and allow people to serve where they live.
Senator Duckworth. Thank you. Mr. Wada, from your
perspective, with the Commission and your previous experience
working in DOD, what are some potential barriers to
implementing a service corps designed for military families,
and are there any other ways you can think of for the
Department to make service opportunities accessible to military
spouses and families?
Ms. Wada. Thank you, Senator, for the question. I think
that providing opportunities and to family members and spouses
that would develop the skills necessary for them to be able to
transition from base to base is important, and leveraging
national service to be able to do would be of benefit. I think
the Department would have to do an analysis, though, on how
best to engage in such a program, to ensure that they are
meeting not just the potential requirements that may be
highlighted or identified by the Department and the services,
but also in the local communities in which they serve, so that
there is a balance.
Senator Duckworth. Thank you. Mr. Khazei, there are a
number of programs throughout DOD that support employment, but
the momentum and motivation to take advantage of these programs
can really vary from installation to installation. Obviously,
the installation commander can make it easy or difficult. Do
you see the establishment of a military family service corps as
something that can help support these effort in alignment with
the overall national public service program's intent?
Mr. Khazei. Senator Duckworth, yes, I think your proposal
is a brilliant idea, and there is precedent. FEMACorps, which
is a partnership between AmeriCorps and FEMA [Federal Emergency
Management Agency], leveraging FEMA resources and the
AmeriCorps experience in developing a service program, has been
extremely successful in a number of areas. I think that,
military spouse unemployment, as you know, is 24 percent. When
Blue Star Families did a study last year, they found that the
number one concern of military spouses is employment
opportunities. This kind of program, I think, could be
developed as an AmeriCorps program for military families, and
we found that AmeriCorps is a great transition to employment.
People learn skills. People who volunteer are 27 percent more
likely to be employed after, and in rural it is 55 percent.
There is tons of work on installations, whether it is working
military schools, supporting wounded warriors, supporting
families transitioning, coming up with high-quality other
activities.
So it could be a standalone program. It could be developed
in partnership between the Corporation for National Service and
the Defense Department. I think there would be tremendous
interest. As you know, there is a strong spirit of volunteerism
across our military families and on installations.
Senator Duckworth. Thank you so much. This has been such an
interesting hearing, and I appreciate each and every one of you
for participating. Mr. Chairman, thank you for having a hearing
on this topic. I yield back.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Duckworth. Senator
Tuberville, please.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank all of you for being here today. You know, as a former
educator and coach, I believe in what we talked about a little
bit earlier, about civic education. It is amazing, me traveling
across the country to our schools, and doing a lot of what you
are talking about, recruiting, that is all I did. They call you
coaches but you are a recruiter, trying to get the best to come
play for you, to keep your job. Sometimes works; sometimes it
didn't. But it is amazing to me, around a lot of these kids
that are immigrants who know more about our country than our
natural-born citizens. I know in Alabama the last few years we
now teach, required teaching civics in the school. Auburn
University, where I coached for a long time and where I live
now, to get into Auburn you have to have had civics in school.
We are not teaching our basic fundamentals.
That being said, it is hard. Recruiting is hard. Getting
kids nowadays, in this environment of technology, finding kids
that want to work, to be honest with you. I would recruit 25
kids a year--25. I would give them $100,000 to $150,000
scholarship. Maybe 50 percent of them made it for 4 years. They
could not handle the strain, the hard work, the dedication, the
teamwork, the responsibilities. It is amazing in this country
how many of these kids have never seen the sun come up. They do
not understand it unless they have been out all night. You
know, my guys got up at 5 every morning, and we went to work.
So we have got our hands full. If we want to do something
like this to where we obviously--we want a volunteer army. We
want volunteer people to fight for this country. But also, we
are in a situation now where we are going to have to have
people trained.
I was glad to hear you say about education. Selling people
on coming here, you can get an education. You can get an
education doing this. So I think a big thing we have got to do
is obviously marketing. Marketing is a huge part of it. You see
a lot. I have been on all these campuses and high schools and
you see all these recruiters and people selling those things. I
think it is going to have to be even more. But we are in a
tough world now. We are recruiting people that are hard-nosed.
We are not as tough as we used to be. People used to have to
fight to eat. Now my kids are the same way, 25 and 26 years
old. They are kids that they do not really understand, getting
their hands dirty sometimes, and getting knocked down, and
getting back up.
So that being said, with all the things that you have to
have, requirements, Dr. Heck, about getting a kid into school,
or getting them into military, you have got to have an IQ above
85, cannot have a criminal record. We have got so many kids now
that are obese. How many kids do you think from 18 to 24,
through your studies, 18 to 24, do you think, in this country
can make it in the military?
Dr. Heck. Senator Tuberville, it is a great question, and I
will just run real quickly through the numbers for perspective.
Every year there are about 32 million 17- to 24-year-olds in
the Nation, the prime recruiting target. If you take out those
that are unqualified due to physical, medical, behavioral, or
legal problems, you are down to 9 million. If you look at those
that 9 million who are considered highly academically
qualified, which is the equivalent of being an A-B student or a
score of 50 on the Armed Forces Qualification Test, you are
down to 4.5 million. From that group, if you look at those who
meet those first two criteria and are interested or propensed
in serving in the military, you are down to 450,000. So from a
population of 32 million we are going after a recruit pool of
450,000, which every D1 school is also going after, which makes
it very difficult.
Senator Tuberville. Thank you. Have you got any comments on
that?
Ms. Wada. The marketing and recruiting is a very
challenging program for all the services, especially in this
environment. Where, historically, I think, there was a belief
that as the economy gets worse, recruiting will get better I do
not think the services are necessarily seeing that correlation
at this point because understanding that most of divide has
grown. So young adults today do not understand military service
and the opportunities that it provides, and are not exposed to
it because of the military being much more closed because of
security reasons. So there are a number of different factors, I
think, going on today that have an adverse impact on a
service's ability to actually continue to recruit from across
the country. They continue to do it well in certain areas of
the country.
Senator Tuberville. I think the military is a great point
in terms of continuing education. Fifty percent of the kids
that go to 4-year schools nowadays do not need to go. They need
to go to the military or they need to go to 2-year schools to
get educated to continue a life and raise a family like they
want to. I mean, bottom line. Continuing education means that a
majority--I am not going to say a majority--a huge part of our
country, when I took them into school, when I brought them to a
4-year school, could not read over the sixth-grade reading
level. That is where we are at in our education this country.
That is the reason we need military. That is the reason we need
more education in the military, to continue to advance these
kids, and I appreciate the work that you all have done. Thank
you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Tuberville. Senator
Peters, please.
Senator Peters. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to
our witnesses here today, and thank you for the work that you
have done on this report.
I want to focus a little bit on the civics education piece
that you address here, and how important that is and how we
have to strengthen it. We know a lot of school districts are
dropping civics education as well and folks are not getting
exposed to that. We all know that a strong democracy requires
an informed, educated electorate who understand how government
works, what the opportunities are, what the limitations are,
and how the active involvement of a citizen requires more than
just voting. Voting is incredibly important, but it involves a
whole lot more than that.
My sense is, with civics classes, that it does not connect
in ways that we would like that to connect to the high school,
and if it is a required course it is a required course that
they have to punch a ticket and get out of there as quickly as
they can.
So in your research, as you have looked at all of this, are
there some programs that really jumped out as very effective to
do it, more hands-on, especially with the fact that today's
students need more of that kind of interaction. They are not
going to just sit through a lecture. They want to be engaged.
Also where they may have more exposure to actual elected
officials, for example, at all levels, and understand that it
involves city council races as well, and what happens on their
neighborhood street. It is not just what happens in Congress.
Are there some examples of what you, as you looked, is
there an example that really stood out, or two examples?
Dr. Heck. Sure, and thank you, Senator, for the question,
and we could not agree more. As we said in the beginning, civic
education was not one of our charges to evaluate, but it was
brought to us by the general population with whom we spoke as
we traveled the Nation. You are right, the Federal Government
spends $54 per student on STEM and 5 cents per student on civic
education. We believe that civic education is the foundation
upon which a lifetime of service will be built.
So to answer your question, I will give you a specific
example. The Sandra Day O'Connor Act, which was adopted in
Florida, is an incredible example, because you are exactly
right. We do not want sitting through one semester of U.S.
Government to count as civic education. It needs to be woven
through every course, whether it is math, science, history, or
English, so that students are constantly being exposed to
lessons in civic education, of what it means to be an American.
So that is one example that I was most enamored by.
Senator Peters. Well, I want to pick up on that point,
because I think it is critically important that it cross across
all those areas. But I think it is also important that it
starts really early in life. If you are talking to someone in
high school, you are getting a late start in getting that,
because it has to be part of their culture.
From my own personal experience, I am a proud Eagle Scout,
and proud through the scouting program. I started very early in
life, that instilled those values and understand how you put
country above self and the greater good. To what extent did you
look at some of those programs that start in elementary school
or early middle school?
Dr. Heck. Yes, sir. We proposed that the civic education,
the classroom piece of it, begins in kindergarten, but we also
heavily support the reinvigoration of service learning, where
they are now going to take the theory that they have learned in
the classroom and actually apply it. We talk about the
opportunities, perhaps do a specific, finite, concrete service
project as a middle school student, looking at doing a semester
of service while you are in high school, or a summer of
service. Doing a service project between your high school and
college years.
We could not agree more that the place to start exposing
our youth to civic education, service learning, and a lifetime
of service occurs at the earliest of ages, because once you
provide them with a meaningful service opportunity that shows
that they are much more likely to continue serving throughout
their lifetime.
In fact, just as a quick point, one of our first public
engagements was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where we met with
a SeniorCorps group. I asked, ``What was it that you did in
your prior life that now you are a retiree but you still want
to give back, and you are mentoring at-risk youth, or you are
sitting with homebound seniors?'' Almost universally, the
females were teachers or nurses, the males were police officers
or prior service, military service, showing that once you get
hooked--again, being a physician, I believe everybody has a
service gene. Our goal is to unlock it, and activate that gene
so that people want to participate throughout their lifetimes.
Senator Peters. Great. Well, thank you for that, and I
appreciate that answer. We definitely have to focus on getting
to folks very young and making it just part of who they are as
a person. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Peters. Now let me
recognize Senator Rosen via Webex.
Senator Rosen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I am going to
thank the commissioners who are here with us this morning. I
especially want to thank Congressman Doctor Joe Heck, who had
the seat before me in Nevada's Third District. His son, Joey,
and my daughter went to school together in Henderson, in junior
high and high school, and I am just glad to see you here. I am
really proud of the work that you are doing.
To all the witnesses, I really commend your creative
thinking in finding ways to incentivize all Americans. When we
think about the military, national, and public service in the
21st century, we really have to reimagine what civic engagement
looks like. We have to shape serving your country. Like you
said, there are so many ways to serve, and I would argue that
the person giving the service gets as much, if not more than
the people they are serving, because they are really doing
something positive. We have to really be inclusive and aligned
with the information economy.
So many Americans, they really do want to serve but they
face obstacles. Some are older. Some have disabilities. But
some of those folks are the next generation of coders,
cybersecurity experts, but they may not be able to carry that
80-pound pack on their backs. So we have to find ways to
increase opportunities for individuals with diverse abilities
so that they can participate and we can benefit from them being
in national service. When we open the door to people of all
backgrounds, of many ages, we make the most of the amazing
skills that Americans bring to the table in service to our
country, we strengthen our democracy, we strengthen our
national security.
So, Mr. Khazei, can you talk to me about how the Federal
Government, we can expand their service opportunities for
Americans from underserved communities, nontraditional
backgrounds, particularly older or those folks with
disabilities, through existing national service programs or
possibly creating some new ones.
Mr. Khazei. Thank you, Senator Rosen. The terrific thing
about AmeriCorps is that it is open to people of all ages, and
it has great programs from AmeriCorps state and national, the
National Civilian Community Corps to the AmeriCorps SeniorCorps
program. People can serve at all ages, as my colleague,
Chairman Heck, said.
We have proposed a comprehensive system that starts, as he
just said, with civics in school starting in kindergarten, with
opportunities for service learning in middle school, summer of
service, and a semester of service in high school, as a way to
cultivate that energy and that ethic so that when people turn
18 they can seriously consider, should I spend a year in
service, whether it is in AmeriCorps, Peace Corp, or the
military, or joining public service.
One of the things we proposed to expand opportunities is a
new service fellowship program. An inspiration for this came
from a couple of things, one being in Vinton, Iowa, a small,
rural community of just 5,000 people, where we were hosted by
Adam Lounsbury, the head of the state commission in Iowa who is
doing a great job. People said, ``We love AmeriCorps but we do
not have the capacity to do the grants. We do not have the
matching funds, the philanthropy here. We have been able to get
a few VISTAs [Volunteers in Service to America].'' So we said,
why not have the fellowship program where the fellows would be
fully stipended and their Segal award would be paid for, it
will be run through State service commissions where they would
certify local nonprofits and people could serve, as my
colleague said, right in their own backyard. That is one thing
we could do.
We also proposed that the stipend and the Segal awards be
raised so that everybody could afford to do it. We have
proposed that there be wraparound services for people that need
it, and supports for people who have disabilities.
So our report encompasses the full range. We believe that
every single person is an asset and can give back to our
country, and we just have to give them the opportunity and the
support to do so.
Senator Rosen. Well, thank you. I want to pose this to Dr.
Heck. You know, the U.S. is expected to face a shortfall of
over three million skilled tech workers by next year. How can
we leverage junior ROTC and ROTC programs to incentivize and
train them? I have a junior ROTC program that was included in
the NDAA last year, to promote a cyber track for our junior
ROTC. But what can we do to help our schools, our school
districts, our teachers to really promote junior ROTC and other
ROTC programs?
Dr. Heck. Thank you for the question, Senator. Good to see
you again.
We believe that expansion of JROTC [Junior Reserve
Officers' Training Corps] is the key. In our recommendations,
we call for an almost doubling of the available programs to
6,000 by year 2031, in order to provide more opportunities to
high school students to engage in that citizenship program.
Also, in last year's NDAA there was a provision to include in
existing programs and the curriculum an introduction to options
in military, national, and public service. So there is one area
where we can talk about the needs for specific critical skill
sets moving forward, perhaps igniting a spark in a young
student's mind about the type of career or vocation they may
want to pursue upon graduation.
Certainly in senior ROTC, at the college level, there are
opportunities for the cadets to engage in meaningful
experiences that expose them to a wide variety of military
occupational specialties, and so emphasis can be placed on
those that are in critical need, at any given time, through
that curriculum. Again, the key is to be able to increase
opportunities by increasing awareness and by motivating more
people to want to serve.
Senator Rosen. Well, I thank you all for being here, for
your thoughtful work, and your terrific suggestions. Thank you.
Chairman Reed. Thank you, Senator Rosen, and Dr. Heck and
Ms. Wada and Mr. Khazei, thank you for a very, very informative
hearing that has engaged all of us, and that follows on what I
think is an extraordinarily helpful report. The Commission has
rendered a great national service, and I want to commend you,
and I wish you would get that commendation to your colleagues
too.
In fact, you have given us a roadmap, really, as we
consider these issues in the next NDAA, and after careful
consideration and debate, as we will want to do, we hope we can
use that roadmap to get to the place you have pointed to.
Dr. Heck and colleagues, thank you very, very much, and at
this point I will adjourn the hearing. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:21 a.m., the Committee adjourned.]
final recommendations and report of the national commission on
military, national, and public service
Chairman Reed, Ranking Member Inhofe and Members of the Armed
Services Committee,
Service Year Alliance is pleased to submit this testimony for the
record for the hearing on the National Commission on Military,
National, and Public Service.
Service Year Alliance is an organization working to make a year of
paid, full-time national service--a service year--a common expectation
and opportunity for all young Americans. We do that through our Serve
America Together campaign, which brings together a coalition of
military and civilian service organizations, among others, to advocate
to make civilian national service part of growing up in America. We
also support service year programs and help stand up new innovative
models, and maintain the only online portal--ServiceYear.org--that
connects young people to all different types of available service year
opportunities, including AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, YouthBuild and non-
federally funded programs.
We were thrilled by the establishment of the National Commission on
Military, National and Public Service and grateful to see the bold
vision it outlined in its final ``Inspired to Serve'' report. We
strongly support the Commission's vision of a lifetime of continued
service and specifically of one million young people serving in
civilian service year opportunities.
Our Nation is in the grips of a pandemic that is affecting every
aspect of our lives. Our public health system is struggling to cope
with COVID-19. Education has been disrupted and children face continued
learning loss. Millions of Americans do not know where they will find
their next meal, and communities across the country are dealing with
the impacts of climate change in the form of fires, hurricanes, and
coastal degradation.
At the same time, a generation of young people are increasingly
disconnected from education and employment. Millions graduated from
college and found no job prospects. Others who might have gone on to
higher learning have either chosen not to or been unable to for a
variety of reasons. The impact on educational opportunities has been
most felt by economically disadvantaged youth and youth of color.
Finally, the last few years have shown us how polarized our country
has become.
National service is uniquely suited to address all of these
challenges. National service corps members serving with programs like
AmeriCorps, YouthBuild, and the conservation corps are already
mentoring and tutoring students, supporting vaccine distribution
efforts, protecting our public lands, and serving at food banks across
the country. Through their service, these young people are developing
leadership and professional skills that put them on a pathway to higher
education and careers while becoming an engaged and culturally
competent generation of leaders who are more empathetic and better
understand people who are different than themselves.
Their service also has a proven return on investment (ROI), which
is as high as $11 for every Federal dollar spent. That ROI can grow
even larger when communities come together to coordinate efforts, as
can be seen in Flint, Michigan, where a service accelerator has created
a return of investment of $35.90 for every Federal dollar spent.
During the last year, Congress has taken up national service as a
cost-effective, bipartisan solution to help address the challenges
facing our Nation with bills like the CORPS Act and the Commission's
Inspire to Serve Act. The American Rescue Plan legislation that just
passed Congress includes an additional $1 billion to help expand
current national service efforts--a critical downpayment on the kind of
growth we and the Commission envision for national service.
To truly achieve the Commission's vision of national service we
believe it must:
1. Exist at scale, engaging at least one million young Americans
in civilian national service annually
2. Address America's unmet needs
3. Bridge divides and fuel civic renewal
4. Be an opportunity for all
5. Build pathways to long-term success for individuals who serve
through benefits and connectivity to future education and careers
We were pleased to see the Commission address many of these
fundamentals.
Our top recommendations to the Biden Administration and to Congress
very much align with the Commission's recommendations. This starts with
the crucial premise at the heart of the Commission's work that
military, national, and public service are inherently connected in
creating a civic-minded America.
Our recommendations include:
1. Lead a Whole-of-Government effort to put Americans into
national service to meet our country's urgent needs:
We encourage the Administration to appoint a Service Czar to
lead a task force of federal agencies to assess how they can integrate
national service into their plans to address America's urgent unmet
needs and build interagency corps in partnership with the AmeriCorps
Agency (formerly known as the Corporation for National and Community
Service) and ensure that synergies are created between military,
national, and public service.
This could be effectively done, as the Commission recommended,
by establishing a Council on Military, National, and Public Service
within the Executive Office of the President. That office could
coordinate between different agencies on recruitment, awareness
campaigns, and transitions between different types of service. The
Council could then oversee the implementation of these interagency
corps.
We encourage this committee to consider establishing this
Council through this year's defense authorization bill.
2. Flood the nonprofit sector with critical support through a
service year fellowship:
We support the Commission's idea of establishing a fellowship
program through AmeriCorps that allows flexibility for smaller
nonprofits to nimbly fill gaps, manage volunteer labor, and shore up
staff. Service year fellowships would allow access to corps members to
smaller organizations--including faith-based organizations and
organizations in rural or underserved areas--who would not otherwise
have the organizational and grant-making infrastructure to compete and
receive this support through existing AmeriCorps funding. Independent
Sector has found that nonprofit organizations have lost over a million
positions because of COVID-19 and 7 percent will permanently close.
These fellowship positions can provide a surge of human capital to
nonprofits while creating a pathway to jobs in the nonprofit sector
when the economy recovers.
3. Expand national service opportunities and stabilize and
strengthen AmeriCorps:
As a first step, we support the Commission's recommendation
that the Serve America Act authorization of 250,000 AmeriCorps
positions be fully funded. Ultimately, like the Commission, we would
like to see these positions expanded to 1 million a year. In this
difficult financial environment, we also want to ensure programs can
sustain and grow by addressing challenges with matching funds.
AmeriCorps has waived the match requirement for fiscal year 2021 to
allow nonprofits to use their federal funds even if they are not able
to fully match them. We need, however, to also look for other
opportunities to match these funds.
4. Raise awareness and enable matching of young americans through
state-of-the-art technology:
Historically, the national service field has greatly depended
on word-of-mouth as a core recruitment strategy to bring the next
generation into service. For this reason, the majority of Americans
still aren't aware of the opportunities that national service can
provide for themselves, their children, or their family and friends. We
support the Commission's recommendation of an awareness campaign that
directs individuals to the diversity of positions across the country to
serve. It will help to connect the many young people in our country
whose paths have been disrupted by the pandemic, with opportunities to
give back and gain skills. In particular, it will be critical to ensure
this campaign utilizes both traditional channels as well as digital
channels to reach the target audiences and deliver them directly to
opportunities to serve.
The Commission called for a central platform for all service
types in their report, as a means of making it easier for all young
Americans to serve regardless of whether it is through military or
civilian service. Service Year Alliance, through the generous support
of philanthropy, has already made significant investments in technology
and best practices over the past 6 years to meet this need with the
development and launch of ServiceYear.org. This platform is a state-of-
the-art online marketplace that houses service year opportunities--
including AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and other non-federally funded
positions--and makes it easy for users to browse positions, get matched
with opportunities based on their interests, and apply to serve.
Leveraging the technology and learnings from this experience would
enable the administration to quickly roll out a cost-effective solution
to support this national awareness campaign and match young Americans
with the right service opportunity for them.
5. Make national service positions accessible to all young
Americans:
We strongly support the Commission's recommendations on
increasing the living allowance and wraparound services as fundamental
to making national service something that is truly accessible to all
young people.
Currently, AmeriCorps members receive stipends that are tied to
the poverty level. These stipends make the choice of national service
virtually impossible for young people coming from lower-income families
who will have no choice but to choose employment opportunities over the
possibility of building long-term skills through national service. Even
those who can choose to serve oftentimes depend on food stamps. A 175
percent increase from the current AmeriCorps VISTA living allowance,
with adjustments for regional cost of living, would allow all young
Americans to choose this pathway to empowerment and potential careers.
The tax on stipends, which creates an additional barrier to
participation in national service by significantly limiting the amount
of money corps members take home, should be eliminated.
Further, as the Commission pointed out, wraparound services
like housing and childcare would make it possible for more young people
to make a choice to serve. As would raising the Segal Education Award
to make it a worthwhile investment, making it more flexible, and
eliminating the tax on it to match other education awards provided by
the Federal Government.
We also agree with the Commission's recommendation to ``direct
the CEO of CNCS to work with the American Association State Colleges
and Universities and the National Governors Association to encourage
members to offer in-state tuition rates to all national service
alumni.'' The Agency's Schools for Service is one effort to accomplish
this. We would also like to see, as the Commission recommended, that
``all State Governors and State legislatures require public
institutions of higher education to offer all national service alumni
and Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) application fee waivers
and/or course credit incentives in recognition of service experience.''
6. Set young people up for success:
The United States is going through a transition in its economy
to high-skilled jobs just as many low-skilled jobs have been wiped out
by the pandemic. One way to address this challenge is by using national
service positions as a tool to create pathways to employment and to the
middle class. National service positions cannot under law compete with
existing jobs, nor should they impede new job creation. Rather, there
should be a focus on integrating skills training, certifications, and
credentialing into programs and working with institutions of higher
learning, workforce development organizations, unions, and employers to
help national service positions create pipelines to 21st century jobs.
These paths should include developing programs or trainings
that allow national service programs to be designated as ``civic
apprenticeships'' that help young people move into the nonprofit sector
as well as integrating trainings and credentialing into other high-need
sectors. Further, AmeriCorps should also work with colleges and
universities to accredit programs that can provide college credits or
skills training that help young people transition from national service
programs to higher education.
Finally, as the Commission recommends, the new Administration
should allow service year corps members to receive the same
preferential hiring and non-competitive eligibility for Federal jobs as
returned Peace Corps volunteers and AmeriCorps VISTA members. The
Federal Government provides a non-competitive hiring authority for
individuals who complete the Peace Corps and AmeriCorps VISTA. By
extending this authority to everyone who completes a year of national
service, the Federal Government would not only incentivize national
service but provide a pathway into government for highly motivated,
civically minded young Americans.
Not all of these recommendations fall under the jurisdiction of
this Committee. However, because of the important linkages that the
Commission identified between military, national, and public service,
there are some key things that the committee could do. In particular,
the Committee should authorize the creation of the White House Office
on Military, National, and Public Service. We encourage you to also
look at ways to integrate recruitment among different service
opportunities. Each military service has a recruiting command, while
AmeriCorps has almost no recruitment capacity--even though 71 percent
of young people are not qualified to serve in the military. Better
integrating these efforts would capture the enthusiasm for service
among young people and help them find the right path forward to serve
their country.
Finally, servicemembers and their families have already
demonstrated a propensity to serve our country. There are many options
for providing them with other service opportunities. Specifically, we
encourage you to use the bill to establish a military family
interagency service corps between the Department of Defense and
AmeriCorps. Military families already have a high propensity for
service--in fact, they already do serve alongside their servicemembers.
They also move frequently, meaning that they are often far from their
extended families. Further, the frequent moves make it hard for
military spouses to work. A military family service corps would allow
spouses and adult dependents to serve in their communities, build
networks and relationships, while putting them on a pathway to careers.
If implemented correctly, this career pathway would include the kinds
of credentials and skills necessary for portable careers.
We also encourage you to allow servicemembers to participate in
civilian national service programs as part of the on-the-job training
that they may participate in in their last 180 days on Active Duty in
the DOD SkillBridge program.
As the commission so clearly demonstrated, national service has
the power to bring Americans together in common purpose--whether that
is on a forward operating base overseas or in a health center or food
bank in their community. Imagine what our Nation could be if every
young person had such an opportunity.
[all]