Congress and the Draft

The House approved a four-year extension of the Selective Service Act last Monday after two afternoons of committee hearings and two hours of debate. A Senate committee cleared the bill two days later and the full Senate approved it Saturday after a brief discussion.

Such snappy handling of legislation might seem commendable, but in its hurry to pass the bill, Congress failed to consider changes which would have eliminated some of the inequities caused by the present draft laws.

Eight hundred thousand men of draft age are currently unemployed. Uncertainty about the draft is definitely a major cause of this problem. No employer wants to train a man for a year only to lose him to the government, and no employer enjoys having to rehire a drafted worker after his discharge, as the law currently requires.

Rep. Roman Pucinski's proposal to reduce the maximum draft age from 26 to 21 would relieve young men from uncertainty about their futures without compromising the national defense. Removing the threat of the draft would make 22 to 26 year olds desirable to employers.

Such a change would leave the Army more than enough potential soldiers. Of the 10 million men currently registered for the draft, some 38,000 were called up last year. If the draft age were cut to 21, four and a half million men would remain available.

Pucinski's proposal would not exempt from the draft those who get deferments until they turn 22. Everyone would have the same chance of being called up by his draft board; if a man chose to take a deferment for study or some other reason, he would be drafted when his deferment expired even if he were over 22.

The House defeated the amendment on a voice vote after Rep. Carl Vinson (D-Ga.) claimed that the President has the authority to make the change by executive order. It seems strange that Congress, which so often complains of the excessive powers assumed by the President, would not take the initiative in the case of this useful action.

Congress failed even to raise one other important issue, the draft status of Peace Corpsmen. These volunteers perform a service more than equivalent to two years of peeling potatoes at Fort Dix; yet they face the possibility of two years in the Army after their release from the Corps.

No one wants to make the Corps a haven for draft dodgers, but some relief for Corpsmen from the present system would seem only fair. Perhaps all the volunteers should be given six weeks basic training before going overseas and be placed in the standby reserve upon their return. This would assure the Corpsmen's participation in the military, and would prevent their being called upon to serve for an unjustly long time.

Everyone agrees that the draft is necessary, but there is no need to preserve its inequities along with its virtues. A legislature that seems to have so much time to spare for talks on filibusters and committee assignments might do well to give more attention to a piece of legislation that affects the life of every young man in the country.