WASHINGTON - Spending money on a permanent increase in Army troops would hamper efforts to modernize the service, the Army's top general said Wednesday.
Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker renewed the Pentagon argument that the military can get through the current high level of deployments with temporary increases such as mobilizing more National Guard and Reserve forces and encouraging more soldiers to re-enlist at the end of their duty.
"We are growing the Army as fast as we can grow the Army," he told the House Armed Services Committee. He was speaking at a hearing into Army transformation - the effort in recent years to switch from Cold War posture and make the service faster, lighter and more able to quickly deal with today's threats.
Against Bush administration wishes, the Senate and House have voted to add tens of thousands of troops to an Army stretched thin when the war on Iraq was launched on top of the global war on terror.
The two different bills must still be reconciled. The Senate wants to add 20,000 soldiers and the House 30,000 soldiers and 9,000 Marines to help solve the problem of an extremely high use of reservists as well as repeated and extended deployments for active duty and reserve.
Some lawmakers say they've also heard constituent complaints about the use of stop-loss to bolster Army numbers - that is, stopping troops losses by keeping in some after they have served their time.
Schoomaker said the disagreement is not over whether the Army needs to be bigger, but over how to pay for it and whether "we should encumber ourselves ... in the out years with increased permanent" troop numbers.
"If we are encumbered, we end up trading off ... our modernization and transformational capability," he said.
Committee member Rep. Ellen O. Tauscher, D-Calif., disagreed after the hearing, saying the stop-loss action and recent call-up of former soldiers in the Individual Ready Reserve "are desperate tactics that will cause difficulties with recruitment and retention."
"It is unconscionable that the Pentagon, instead of training additional new troops to replace those in the field, would continue to break promises to those soldiers already deployed, extending their stays time and time again," Tauscher said in a statement, adding it could lead to "a broken military."
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