Biden promises Nat'l Guard spot with Chiefs

Sen. Joe Biden said on Monday that an Obama-Biden administration would make the chief of the National Guard Bureau a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“Change begins with giving the Guard a seat at the table - that table in the Pentagon where the Joint Chiefs sit,” the Democratic vice presidential candidate from Delaware said in remarks prepared for delivery to the National Guard Association Conference.

Though Defense Secretary Robert Gates has taken steps to address the problem of National Guard equipment shortfalls by boosting the clout of the Guard, top Pentagon officials haven’t signed on to making the chief of the Guard a member of the Joint Chiefs, which would put the Guard leader on par with the top military officers in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps and Navy.

Advocates for the Guard have been arguing for several years that the Guard has suffered because its top officials are outranked at the Pentagon, an issue that came to a head with a 2007 Government Accountability Office report showing that Guard units across the country didn’t have the equipment needed to respond to crises at home.

Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Kit Bond (R-Mo.), co-chairmen of the National Guard Caucus, have pushed to make the chief of the National Guard a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but last year Congress instead followed the recommendations of a blue-ribbon panel on Guard and Reserve issues that didn’t go quite that far.

The commission made 17 recommendations, among them that the chief of the Guard be made a four-star general and that a National Guard officer be named to one of the top posts at Northern Command. Both of those recommendations were incorporated into the 2008 Defense Authorization Act.

In July, Gates nominated Lt. Gen. Craig McKinley as chief of the Guard Bureau and recommended that he receive a fourth star. Gates also nominated Lt. Gen. H. Steven Blum, the former chief of the National Guard, to the deputy command job at Northern Command. Congress has not yet acted on those nominations.

Former Marine Maj. Gen. Arnold Punaro, chairman of the Commission on the National Guard and Reserve, said the commission stopped short of expanding the Joint Chiefs because the change would effectively create a new service.

When the Guard is performing a role for the active-duty Army, it needs to be better integrated with the service rather than separated from it, he said.

Punaro said he is hoping that the changes made by Congress are given time to make a difference. And even though the Pentagon has been taking steps to improve the situation, Punaro, an executive for SAIC, said he understands the frustrations of those who wanted deeper change.

“The burden is on the Pentagon to make it work,” Punaro said.