I 
109TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 3275 
To amend title 10, United States Code, to provide for an increase in the 
minimum end-strength level for active duty personnel for the United 
States Army, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JULY 13, 2005 
Mrs. TAUSCHER (for herself and Mr. UDALL of Colorado) introduced the 
following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Armed Services 
A BILL 
To amend title 10, United States Code, to provide for an 
increase in the minimum end-strength level for active 
duty personnel for the United States Army, and for 
other purposes. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘United States Army 
Relief Act of 2005’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress makes the following findings:
(1) The 2004 National Military Strategy of the 
United States assigns the Army the task of oper-
ating with the other Armed Forces to provide for 
homeland defense, deter aggression forward from 
and in four different regions around the world, con-
duct military operations in two overlapping but geo-
graphically disparate major campaigns, and win de-
cisively in one of those campaigns before shifting 
focus to the next one. 
(2) The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
General Richard Myers, has directed that the Army 
must be able to ‘‘win decisively’’ in one theater, even 
when it is committed to a number of other contin-
gencies. 
(3) While Congress lauds the current efforts by 
the Administration to reduce demands upon ground 
forces by continuing to pursue the transformation of 
the United States military as a whole, the recent ex-
periences of the Army in Iraq serve to underscore 
the fact that there is, as of yet, no substitute for 
having sufficient troops to conduct personnel-inten-
sive post-conflict missions. 
(4) The current force requirements posed by 
the ongoing operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and 
elsewhere as part of the Global War on Terror are
unsustainable for the long term and undermine the 
ability of the United States military to successfully 
execute the National Military Strategy. 
(5) Although the burden may be a heavy one, 
we as a nation and as a people must not, will not, 
shy away from our engagement in world affairs to 
defend our interests and to defend those who are 
themselves defenseless. 
(6) Our engagement in Afghanistan, Iraq, and 
the greater Middle East is, as Secretary of State 
Condoleezza Rice stated, a ‘‘generational’’ one. 
(7) Although our commitments in this region— 
and around the world—are vital, the Army has been 
‘‘overused’’ according to the Chief of the United 
States Army Reserve. 
(8) The Army currently has approximately 
499,000 active duty troops, and these are backed up 
by nearly 700,000 members of the Army National 
Guard and the Army Reserve. 
(9) This number is a third less than the force 
level on hand when the first Persian Gulf War was 
fought in 1991. 
(10) Approximately 150,000 of these troops are 
in Iraq. Nearly 10,000 troops are in Afghanistan.
1,700 serve in Kosovo. 37,000 serve on the Korean 
peninsula. 
(11) As of 2005 the relationship between the 
total number of troops and the number of operation-
ally deployed troops has resulted, as the com-
manding general of the 18th Corps of the Army at 
Fort Bragg remarked in 2004, in an active-duty 
force that is ‘‘stretched extraordinarily thin.’’ 
(12) A former Army Deputy Chief of Staff has 
stated that in light of the growing operational de-
mands upon it in the strategic environment after 
September 11, 2001, that the Army ‘‘is too small to 
do its current missions’’. 
(13) That former Army Deputy Chief of Staff 
further stated that the current size of the Army, 
coupled with the current demands upon it, has re-
sulted in a loss of ‘‘the resiliency to provide either 
strategic balance—what you need if some other 
thing flares up—or to be able to give a respite as 
the troops rotate back from overseas areas where 
they’ve been in combat.’’ 
(14) In its attempts to fulfill its missions with 
too few troops, the Army has risked ‘‘damaging’’ the 
force significantly or ‘‘even breaking it in the next
five years’’, according to a division commander dur-
ing Operation Desert Storm. 
(15) In a December 2004 letter to the Chief of 
Staff, United States Army, the Chief of the United 
States Army Reserve wrote that ‘‘the current de-
mands’’ of operations in the Middle East were 
‘‘spreading the Reserve force too thin’’ and that his 
command ‘‘was in grave danger’’ of being unable to 
meet other missions abroad or domestically, and that 
the Army Reserve was ‘‘rapidly degenerating into a 
‘broken force’ ’’. 
(16) The letter referred to in paragraph (15) 
was intended, the Chief of the United States Army 
Reserve 
wrote, 
not 
‘‘to 
sound 
alarm-
ist. . .[but]. . .to send a clear, distinctive, signal of 
deepening concern’’ to his superiors. 
(17) In addition to hampering the ability of the 
Army to successfully complete the missions assigned 
to it, this ‘‘overuse’’ has significant consequences for 
domestic homeland security operations. 
(18) A disproportionate number of Federal, 
State, and local first responders are also members of 
the National Guard or Reserve. 
(19) At a time of strain for large municipalities 
struggling to secure their infrastructure against the