N.C. governor says Guard ill-prepared for crises at home

Faced with a worsening readiness crisis, the National Guard is ill-prepared to handle "no-notice" disasters, such as the tornado that struck Greensburg, Kan., just over a week ago, North Carolina Democratic Gov. Mike Easley said Monday.

During a conference call with reporters, Easley also said many state Guard units would have difficulty responding to hurricanes larger than a Category 3 storm without the immediate assistance of nearby states.

The North Carolina National Guard, for instance, has roughly 55 percent of its equipment on hand -- up about 30 percent since February, said Easley, the National Governors Association's co-leader for National Guard issues. But many other state Guard units, including the Maryland National Guard, have reported missing far more than half of their equipment.

Lt. Gen. Steven Blum, chief of the Defense Department's National Guard Bureau, recently noted a "death spiral" in readiness rates for Guard units, saying that, on average, most states have only 40 percent of their Army Guard equipment.

Easley's assessment comes as state and federal officials are angling to secure more funding and authority for the state-run units. The situation received national attention last week, when Kansas Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius asserted that equipment shortages hindered the Kansas National Guard's response to the tornadoes.

But it has been an issue on Capitol Hill for more than a year, as lawmakers have moved to increase National Guard funding in annual and supplemental Defense spending bills. The recently vetoed fiscal 2007 supplemental spending bill included an additional $1 billion for the Guard, as did the House Armed Services Committee's version of the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, approved by the panel last week.

"Their supplies, their equipment and their manpower is disastrously low," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., co-chairman of the Senate National Guard Caucus, said during the teleconference. Senate Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., last week seized on the Kansas tornadoes to criticize the White House for vetoing the supplemental spending bill.

"If the White House continues to cling to its failing occupation of Iraq to the detriment of all other priorities, we will only see more stories of unnecessary heartache like those in Greensburg and New Orleans," Byrd said.

Anti-war protesters also used reports of National Guard equipment shortages in Kansas to press Congress to oppose continued troop deployments in Iraq, where large amounts of Guard equipment has been lost, destroyed, abandoned or reused by other military units.

To give the Guard greater decision-making power, Leahy has been championing legislation that would elevate the Guard chief to a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and give the Guard more authority over its budget and policy matters. The bill now has 51 co-sponsors, representing a majority of the Senate, while identical legislation in the House has drawn 83 co-sponsors.

The Pentagon has opposed the Joint Chiefs of Staff provision, but has backed promoting the Guard chief to a four-star general and supported several other changes in the bill. The fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill, which the House will debate this week, includes several policy provisions affecting the Guard, including the promoting the three-star Guard chief to a four-star general.

The Guard has "been neglected too long and I'm hoping we're bringing enough of a sense of urgency in the Congress," Leahy said.