National Spotlight on 71% of Young Americans Ineligible for Military Service
WASHINGTON, Feb. 22, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Several national publications have recently echoed the warnings of hundreds of retired admirals and generals about the 71 percent of young Americans ages 17 to 24 that are ineligible to serve in the military, primarily because they are too poorly educated, too overweight, or have a disqualifying record of crime or drug abuse.
Mission: Readiness, an organization of more than 700 retired admirals and generals under the nonprofit Council for a Strong America, has been working since 2009 to sound the alarm on this issue and just released a new map with updated state-by-state military ineligibility rates from the Department of Defense: https://www.strongnation.org/articles/414-map-many-young-americans-are-ineligible-to-serve-in-the-military.
Two Members of Congress belong to Mission: Readiness: U.S. Representative Jack Bergman (R-MI), a retired United States Marine Corps Lieutenant General, and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a retired Air Force Brigadier General. Bergman serves on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee and the House Budget Committee, and is also the highest ranking military veteran ever sworn into Congress. Bacon serves on the House Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Military Personnel.
At a Heritage Foundation event in October 2017, Rep. Bacon noted that "the single most important ingredient to readiness is the constant flow of willing volunteers." He noted that current recruitment concerns are "a red flag for our country." He added, "What happens if we had a national emergency requiring the services to draw from the wider pool?"
At an event at the American Enterprise Institute in December 2017, Rep. Bergman expressed concern that one percent or less of Americans are active military personnel, with less than 10 percent of Americans having ever served at all. "We're dealing with the edge of the bell curve, but that edge has a tremendous amount of responsibility," he noted.
Mission: Readiness works at the state and federal levels to encourage investments to help address the primary disqualifiers for military service, such as high-quality early care and education programs, rigorous K-12 education standards, healthy school meals, and physical education. Most recently, the retired military leaders of Mission: Readiness applauded the doubled level of funding for the Child Care and Development Block Grant included in the budget deal.
SOURCE Mission: Readiness
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