[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 136 (Wednesday, October 16, 2002)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10548-S10549]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                RESERVISTS AND GUARD PAID PROTECTION ACT

  Ms. LANDRIEU. Mr. President, I will now address the Reservists and 
Guard Paid Protection Act, which I introduced last week. I'm looking 
forward to working diligently in the months and years ahead--hopefully, 
it won't take years--to pass this bill. I think it is a bill we 
probably should have addressed some years ago. I will speak to what the 
bill does.
  The Reservists and Guard Paid Protection Act attempts to put into law 
a tax credit for employers who voluntarily--because it is not 
mandatory--pay their reservists and maintain their salary level when 
they are called up to represent us, to fight for us, to stand in harm's 
way, to preserve our freedom, whether it be in Afghanistan, Bosnia, or 
Iraq, or anyplace our flag needs to continue to wave.
  Mr. President, as you might know--and I am certain most people in 
America don't realize--when our reservists are called up, their salary 
is cut. When our reservists are called up to defend us--because the 
President, our Commander in Chief, and this Congress have authorized us 
to call on them, to call on their lives, their health, and strength to 
defend us--they, in most instances, take a pay cut. Why? Because their 
salaries are generally higher in the civilian sector than we are able 
to compensate them.
  No soldier works for a paycheck, I realize that. If they did, we 
would not have any soldiers, because their paychecks are not what they 
need to be. They are patriotic and they believe in our Nation and they 
want to do their part. For that, they should be commended.
  This Reservists and Guard Protection Act gives their employers, if 
they voluntarily keep their salaries at the level they were before they 
were called up to serve, a 50 percent tax credit. So it helps the 
employer, who also is making a sacrifice, might I say, in the new 
system we have on relying more on reservists and guardsmen. The 
employers themselves are, of course, by law mandated to keep that job 
open so when the Reservists come back, they have a job. They are not 
mandated--and should not be--to pick up the tab for their salary, but 
we can help, and the cost is really minimal compared to the benefits 
that would result.
  In addition, this bill also would mandate the Federal Government 
would maintain, for those reservists who are Federal employees--and we 
have a good percentage--not a majority, but a number of our Federal 
employees who might work at Treasury during the day, but are weekend 
warriors, and now they are full-time warriors because they have been 
called up--this bill would mandate the Federal Government simply 
maintain their pay at their regular level. Instead of taking the 
paycheck and sending part of it back to the Treasury while they defend 
us, they would be allowed to keep that paycheck, which would make a 
tremendous amount of sense. I know it would mean a tremendous amount to 
the spouses and family members at home, who have to keep the lights on, 
pay the mortgage, pay the rent, or pay the car payment monthly, food 
bills, et cetera. Just because one person in the family--one of the 
breadwinners, and in some cases it may be the sole breadwinner--has 
been called up to go to war, the family bills don't stop coming. They 
need to be paid.
  So anything we can do to keep our reservists' and our guardsmen's pay

[[Page S10549]]

where it was so they are not taking a cut to defend us, I think would 
be appropriate at this time. Basically, that is what this bill does.
  Let me make another point before I close.
  Since 1991, the U.S. military has significantly scaled down its 
active troops because we came to the end of the cold war and we thought 
we could scale back our active troops. Now we are scaling up, of 
course, to meet these new threats, and into the foreseeable future, by 
calling on our Reserves more and more. In fact, they represented 40 to 
50 percent of our troop force in Desert Storm. We have called on them 
in somewhat a disproportionate way to defend us in Bosnia, Afghanistan, 
and no doubt, if we go to Iraq, our active force will be perhaps 
100,000, if not 200,000, in number, and many of them will be 
reservists.
  Gone are the cold war days when we had massive military personnel 
positioned all over the world. Now we are relying on a leaner force. 
The reservists have become a part of that leaner force because we need 
flexibility in putting our force together to serve a great purpose.
  In addition, with the new war--and you know, Mr. President, because 
you serve on the Armed Services Committee and the Emerging Threats 
Subcommittee which I chair, you are familiar with the fact we are going 
to need new skill sets in our armed services--linguists, cultural 
experts, historians. We are going to need different skill sets, highly 
technical individuals--public relations people, individuals who have 
skills about setting up civil authorities. So our new Army, Navy, Air 
Force, and Marines have to be a group of men and women who are highly 
trained in specialized skills.
  Sometimes we can get those specialized skills from those on active 
duty, but it is smarter, more economical, and actually more effective 
if we are able to pull certain types of skills out of the civilian 
force when needed to apply them to that specific goal or objective. 
That is the way this new military is going to be designed for the 
future. It is different from the First World War, different from the 
Second World War, different than the cold war strategy. With a new 
strategy and new weapons, we are asking the reservists to do more. 
Let's not ask them to do more with less. Let's not ask them to do more 
and cut their pay. Let's do right by our reservists by supporting them. 
They are weekend warriors, but now they are simply warriors. Our 
benefits to them and our pay systems should reflect this new demand on 
their schedules.
  OPTEMPO is up. Our conflicts and our challenges are right before us, 
and we need to respond.
  I am hoping we will gain support for this act. I look forward to 
debating and presenting it to the committee, but I think this is the 
least we can do to support a segment of our national security force 
that is so important and so crucial for us to win the war on terrorism, 
to establish the peace around the world, so this economy, and economies 
around the world, can grow and people truly can live in peace and 
prosperity. These are the people who are on the front line making that 
happen.
  This is a very important bill. I hope we will gain a lot of support 
for it as the months and weeks unfold.

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