Nevada Guard officials warn budget cuts may impair emergency responses

Automatic, across-the-board military cutbacks of nearly $500 billion over the next 10 years would not only affect operations overseas but also undermine the National Guard’s ability to respond to domestic emergencies, state and former federal homeland defense officials said this week.

The first round of budget cuts, known as sequestration, split equally between national security and nonsecurity government programs, would take effect in January if Congress and President Barack Obama can’t agree on a deficit reduction plan this year.

In terms of defense cuts, the National Guard and other reserve components would be affected disproportionately because cutting 10 percent of the days a Guard soldier or airman works would amount to a deeper cut than for active duty personnel, Nevada National Guard spokeswoman Air Force Maj. April Conway said.

“Cutting our organization would be disproportionate,” Conway said Thursday. “We only get paid for the days we work. Cutting the same as active duty cuts the Guard deeper.”

She said Brig. Gen. William R. Burks, Nevada’s adjutant general, is “cautiously optimistic that the congressional delegation in Nevada will support retaining the Guard as much as they can.”

She said Burks also agrees with former National Guard Bureau Chief retired Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Paul F. McHale who during a video conference Wednesday painted a gloomy picture of the Guard’s ability to respond to national disasters should the cuts be made.

“This is a serious time. There is no question about it,” Blum said during a panel discussion arranged by The Heritage Foundation, a conservative, public policy think tank.

“The National Guard is not an organization with substantial discretionary budget money. It is a bare-bones, underfunded organization, historically,” Blum said.

The nation has become more dependent on the military’s reserve component in its post-9/11 role to support active duty soldiers, airmen, sailors and Marines while at the same time providing the backbone of response to national dis­asters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

“This is no longer a National Guard that sits around and waits for World War III that is not used in the meantime,” Blum said.

According to The Heritage Foundation, if automatic budget cuts are triggered in January, every governor will have fewer assets to call on for responding to forest fires, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods.

“America will be less ready to respond, not just overseas, but in its own backyard,” according to the foundation’s website.

When Blum was appointed National Guard Bureau chief in 2003, a daily average of 17 states had some aspects of its Guard called in for various responses.

The test of time was Hurricane Katrina in which 50,000 citizen-soldiers from every state and territory responded in less than six days to disaster areas in Louisiana and Mississippi.

“It will shake the confidence of the nation for any administration when the American military cannot properly respond at home,” Blum said.

Unlike combat overseas, such as that seen in cities like Fallujah where control was taken and retaken several times during the Iraq War, “domestically you’re going to get one chance.”

“You’re not getting any ‘redoes’ to take Cincinnati. We’re not going to get any ‘redoes’ on losing (Washington) D.C. or wherever your hometown is. …We saw that in spades in 2005 in Katrina. We came that close for the United States military swinging and missing in Louisiana and Mississippi. We were lucky to recover that fumble in time,” Blum said.

He said a delay in the Guard’s response to Katrina would have translated to lives lost.

Because the Guard wasn’t crimped by sequestration, it was able to respond and credited with saving more than 17,000 lives.

Conway noted that it would take the Guard longer to recover from personnel losses than the active duty armed forces because each state’s National Guard recruits from within a particular state as opposed to a branch of the active duty military, which can draw from a nationwide pool of recruits.

Contact reporter Keith Rogers at
krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.