Fixing the hole

“THERE’S a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza . . .”

The traditional German children’s song—popularized in America by Harry Belafonte’s 1960 recording—describes a perpetuating deadlock in which “Henry” needs to fix a hole in his bucket but ultimately can’t do so without water. Which the bucket can’t hold.

We were reminded of dear Liza, dear Liza (and dear Henry, dear Henry) when the news came of a depleted National Guard in the United States military ranks. That news followed on the heels of recruiting shortages reported across all branches of the U.S. military. Soldiers are leaving the Guard faster than they’re enlisting.

The AP says that currently, the Guard is experiencing an annual net loss of around 7,500 soldiers, the result of recruiting shortages and current service members not re-enlisting when their tour is up, officials say.

Maj. Gen. Rich Baldwin, chief of staff for the U.S. Army National Guard, told the AP that staffing challenges are the worst he’s seen in 20 years. He calls the impact on the Guard “minimal and manageable” . . . for now. But that won’t be the case within a couple of years if the trend isn’t reversed, he said.

Guard officials believe the allure of service isn’t as strong as it was in the aftermath of 9/11 and during the peak of the War on Terror. And as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan wound down, states started seeing higher-than-normal losses in personnel. The same is happening in the post-covid, post-civil unrest world of 2020-21.

Not that we’ve seen the last of either—covid or civil unrest.

Officials link these dips in personnel to a mindset of enlisting to serve the country in trying times, and not so much as a career option during peaceful times.

Gen. Baldwin: “There may be a perception among both our soldiers and the civilians we are trying to recruit that we are on the backside of all that and it’s time to take advantage of the hot job market we have right now.”

Suggestions to fix the Guard’s currently leaky bucket include offering health-care coverage. About 60,000 Guardsmen nationwide aren’t covered by health insurance. And for those in the Guard who are covered by private insurance through their employer, the process of switching to the military’s TRICARE program when they’re called to active duty is a difficult one.

Other options include tried-and-true financial incentives and expanded educational benefits. But the annual cost to insure uncovered Guardsmen alone is estimated at $719 million, the AP reports. The military recruiting bucket isn’t the only one with holes….

Officials worry that it’ll take a direct threat to the homeland to motivate many Americans into service.

Maybe this leaky bucket comes with its own Catch-22 characteristics.