But I am certainly going to vote for this bill. We are going to get something out of here, because we know you will never bring anything down in time for us to act.

Mr. BROOKS. Mr. Fisher.

Mr. FISHER. Mr. Bartimo, you gave the figures estimating the cost? Mr. BARTIMO. Yes, sir.

Mr. FISHER. Under the terms of this proposal.

This is designed to correct an inequity between treatment for involuntarily released reservist as compared with the regulars.

(Mr. Bartimo nods.)

Mr. FISHER. Now, can you give us comparable figures on the cost of the program as it now is during the next fiscal year for regulars who will be so separated?

Mr. BARTIMO. Congressman Fisher, I do not have those figures with me. However, with your permission, sir, I will try to get them over here before the end of the day or possibly tomorrow morning. Mr. FISHER. I was just wondering if it was very much, percentagewise, or what is the history of it? Are there many of the regulars involuntarily released, who will be eligible under this bill, or is it relatively small or insignificant?

Colonel KECK. It is relatively small, sir.

Mr. FISHER. The cost would not be very much?
Mr. BARTIMO. No, sir.

Colonel KECK. No, sir. It would be those primarily who are passed over twice, and of course it depends on promotion attrition but to date it is quite small.

Mr. FISHER. Except for that, there would be very little to it.
Colonel KECK. That is correct.

Mr. FISHER. They are all career people and they usually stay in until their retirement.

Mr. BARTIMO. That is right.

Mr. FISHER. And very few of them I suppose are caught in a r. i. f. program?

Mr. BARTIMO. I believe that is correct.

Mr. BROOKS. Mrs. St. George.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Mr. Chairman, I wanted to ask the witness if he would repeat-I think he gave us four categories, that you said should not be included under this bill, for fairly obvious reasons, that would be separated involuntarily.

Would you read those off again?

Mr. BARTIMO. Yes. You mean that I stated this morning?

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes.

Mr. BARTIMO. I think you had-am I correct that you have reference to the 14-year mark?

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. BARTIMO. Our bill, which Mr. Jackson appeared on and I am sure you were here.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes, that is correct.

Mr. BARTIMO. Provides that every reservist except for a few exceptions like the medics and the veterinarians and so forth, would receive contracts. These contracts would run from 1 to 6 years, only after the first 2 years-and the reason for excepting the first 2 years is that under the Universal Miliary Training and Service Act, most people will have 2 years of obligation to give to their country. So we have

that limitation. Take the example of Lieutenant X. I think that might clarify it a little more. He comes on board for 2 years. At the end of 2 years he is the type of an officer that the military would like to keep on active duty. They would say to Lieutenant X, "If you would like to stay on active duty we will give you a six-year contract. Lieutenant X, knowing that he has a contract for 6 years and is assured of being on active duty for 6 years, agrees. Lieutenant X turns out to be a real hotshot, somebody that the military would hate to see go. So they renew his contract and they give him another 6year contract, which means he has now had 12 years of active duty. This man turns out to be the type of an individual that they want to retain and consider making him a regular.

So we give him, in our example, to take it all the way through, another contract of 2 years.

Colonel KECK. He has 14 years.

Mr. BARTIMO. I am sorry. May I just backtrack here. My good assistant here, colleague, states that my example is allright so far. He has had now two 6-year contracts, which is 12 years, plus 2 years obligated. He therefore has 14 years.

Now when this man reaches the 14-year mark-we would have to do 1 of 3 things. We would either have to send him back to civilian life or we would have to augment him into the Regular service. If we augmented him he would become a Regular officer. Or mandatorily under law, we would have to give him a contract to take him through to 20 years, which as you know, having served 20 years, he would be able to retire under title II of Public Law 810.

Let us take the same example or are you not interested?
Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes; I am.

Mr. BARTIMO. Going back to the second contract. Let us assume that at the end of the second contract of 6 years he were r. i. f.'d at the end of the first 2 years of that contract. Under the legislation suggested by the Department of Defense this man would go home. We had a blank in the number of months' pay he would receive. It might be 1 month or 2 months, whatever the committee finally adopted-or whatever the Department of Defense or the executive branch suggested. But in addition to that, whatever that blank would be, this particular Lieutenant X would receive 4 months of pay and allowances, which is different from just pay, for the uncompleted portion of that second contract.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. That might be, then, after he had served we will say 8 years.

Mr. BARTIMO. Yes-well, he would have served in my example 6 years plus 2 years of obligated service, which would be 8.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Then he signs a contract.

Mr. BARTIMO. Ten years really.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Ten years?

Mr. BARTIMO. Ten years.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. So that after 10 years he could be r. i. f.'d?
Mr. BARTIMO. He could be r. i. f.'d.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. And then he would only get, under your proposal,

half a month for each year served; is that correct?

Mr. BARTIMO. No.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. No?

Mr. BARTIMO. We came up here unfortunately with a blank. We did not know what that figure would be. But there has been discussion as you know, whether it would be 1 month or 2 months.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes.

Mr. BARTIMO. So if it were 1 month-let us assume that as an example.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes.

Mr. BARTIMO. He would get 1 month's pay for each year served under contract, which in my example for Lieutenant X would be 8 years. Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes.

Mr. BARTIMO. So he would receive 8 months' pay in such a case, in addition to 4 months' pay and allowances for the 4 years that were uncompleted.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Uncompleted?

Mr. BARTIMO. Yes, ma'am.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. On the other hand, he has signed a contract, which he supposedly signed in the firm belief that he was going to be kept on for the additional years. And you are in the middle of the contract, r. i. f.'ing him and saying, "You are going to take what we give you."

Mr. BARTIMO. This is the reason we give him 1 month's pay and allowances for the uncompleted portion of the contract.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. The contract is still a contract.

Mr. PRICE. It is binding only on the individual.

Mrs. ST. GEORGE. Yes; that is right.

Mr. BROOKS. If the gentlewoman would yield, I would like to say this: When the Department gives a contract, they ought to know in advance that they can comply with the contract.

Now, if it is breached by early termination, that is liquidated damages for violating the contract. That is really what it is.

Mr. BARTIMO. That is correct, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. BROOKS. So it is not only a question of r. i. f.'ing, but it is a question of the Department breaking its contract there.

Mr. BARTIMO. Yes.

Mr. BROOKS. Now, if that man serves to the termination of his contract, what would he get, when it is just allowed to lapse?

Mr. BARTIMO. No; in my example of Lieutenant X, if he came to the end of a contract, mandatorily in law we only have 3 choicessend him home as a civilian, make him a Regular, that is, augment him, or give him an additional contract if we wanted to keep him aboard through to 20 years.

Mr. BROOKS. Correct. But suppose that man has a 6-year contract and at the end of 6 years the contract is terminated because it is completed. Now, what does he get?

Mr. BARTIMO. In other words-I want to be sure

Mr. BROOKS. What does that officer get?

Mr. BARTIMO. Yes.

Mr. BROOKS. After he has completed his 6 years' contract and he gets no additional contract.

Mr. BARTIMO. Right. He would get whatever the blank figure would be 1 month or 2 months-times 6 years. In other words, if the blank were 1 month's pay, he would receive 6 months' pay.

Mr. BRAY. Mr. Chairman, might I interrupt? Will you yield a moment? Do you not think it is rather, I will not say a waste of time, but futile to discuss a bill that they have already said they are not able to act upon? We have a bill before us, and by your own words our final hearing of the committee is tomorrow. Here we are talking about legislation next year. Of course, it will be changed several times before next year. I think we might as well vote on the bill we have, because they have admitted after 2 years they still do not have a bill to bring to us.

Mr. BROOKS. I think the gentleman is correct, and my thought, and I believe the thought of the members of the committee would be, that this particular bill that we are considering this morning would be an interim, stopgap piece of legislation and would give the Pentagon all the time that it needs to work out a suitable bill to recommend to us.

Mr. BRAY. They have another year, for them to finish the last

sentence.

Mr. BROOKS. If it is another year, fine, and if it is 2 years it is all right. They can take their time.

Mr. BARTIMO. Mr. Chairman, in fairness to the executive branch may I point out very succinctly if I can where we think this interim stopgap legislation might have a deleterious effect. If you enact this legislation, making it retroactive, that is every reservist on board gets 2 months for each year served, no matter what legislation we come up with next year or this next week-we hope this week-it seems to me you have crystallized in law something which would be most difficult to take away. In other words, once you say to every reservist under law "You have 2 months' pay for every year you have served retroactively," even though we come up with a plan which we would recommend, that we think would be beneficial for the Military Establishment, I doubt that we would be able to take that

away.

Mr. BROOKS. Well, we are going to give them

Mr. BARTIMO. This is what we are fearful of.

Mr. BROOKS. No, we are going to give them superior rights in the Pentagon bill of a different nature which you will submit to us. a right, for instance, to retire when they reach 14 years. They know then they can go on to retirement. They will have a lot of new rights there, that should appeal to them.

Now, Mr. Price.

Mr. PRICE. Mr. Chairman, I would just like to ask this question. Unfortunately I was not here at the beginning of the meeting. But did you say that some sort of a plan is under consideration now in the Pentagon?

Mr. BARTIMO. Mr. Price, I am glad you asked me that question because it would give me an opportunity to explain, and I did explain this, and I hope that the chairman will forgive me for repeating, but I would like to do so. And in spite of Mr. Bray's

Mr. DUCANDER. Impatience.

Mr. BARTIMO. Remarks about impatience.

The

The committee in particular has been extremely patient. chairman has been very helpful. He has worked with us, he and his counsel, way back about 6 or 7 months ago to try to help us with a policy decision in this very, very complicated area.

Since that time we have been laboring-and this is no exaggeration-even over the weekend, all day Saturday and Sunday, trying to firm up a position which is equitable to the reservists and also fair to the executive branch and the people of this country.

This position has been difficult because there are so many factors involved.

For example, you have at stake here the philosophical difference between the regular, the professional soldier that devotes an entire lifetime to military service and the reservist who by the very nature of his service knows that he is only going to be on duty for a certain limited period of time.

We don't want to do anything or recommend anything to this committee which would detract from the hard-core professional soldier. And this is not to say and I do not mean to imply in any way that a reservist does not give the same devotion of duty that a regular does to his country. He certainly does.

But getting back to the point, this is the 19th draft of bill, and still we have not got it resolved because there are factors which I have indicated by my example which we are concerned about.

We are concerned about the effect that the Cordiner, recent pay raise, would have. The question is whether this is going to encourage more reservists to stay on board. The difficulties are not so much in the military departments and the Department of Defense, as they are trying to formulate a position which is going to take care of the problems of the individual services. Their problems are different. If we had a full hearing on our bill, they would be up explaining to you their needs with respect to the number of reservists they need now and in the foreseeable future. They are different. They have a lot of similarities.

The Bureau of the Budget has pointed out certain weaknesses in our bill. We have closely worked with the White House staff.

This is a measure which I believe I can state is of such importance that we plan on going before the President with a thorough briefing, so that we might have his judgment, so that he might formulate the final position to recommend to this committee.

Mr. PRICE. Does that mean you have been working along with the Bureau of the Budget, as you have gone over the various drafts of these bills?

Mr. BARTIMO. Congressman Price, we sent over a draft I would say about 2 months ago which we considered met some of the needswell, met the needs of the Department of Defense. As you know the Bureau of the Budget in reviewing this particular draft to determine whether it was in conformance with the program of the President, picked out several weaknesses in our bill. We have met with them and have constantly been working with them since, trying to tighten up these weaknesses. At the same time, because of the pressures of time-and Mr. Brooks insisting that we have a bill, and rightfully so we have also cut in the White House staff.

At this point everybody is briefed on the problem, so to speak, and now we are hoping to take the issues to the President to get a final policy determination.

Mr. PRICE. Does this mean that you are working in such a manner that when you do arrive at some plan that you are willing to recom