Why Are We Spending More for Less Military? : Pentagon: The armed forces are downsizing, but the cost of recruiting keeps rising.

With the end of the Cold War, our armed forces are shrinking. To help with this downsizing, the Department of Defense has been drastically reducing the number of men and women allowed to join the services. The Pentagon will seek one-third fewer recruits this year than in 1989.

Fewer recruits should mean that we spend fewer dollars for recruitment, right? Not so, according to the President’s budget request for 1993--it calls for an increase in a recruiting program that already spends $2 billion a year.

Why doesn’t a one-third reduction in recruits translate into a reduction in this massive recruiting budget? The military is looking for fewer good men and women, yet the Pentagon’s high-powered recruiting machine continues to lumber along, dropping about $40 million every week.

The most notable expense is for advertising. Elaborate promotional spots are broadcast on almost every available media outlet, often during prime-time sports events. We have all seen or heard them--”Be All That You Can Be” in the Army, “Aim High” in the Air Force, “Full Speed Ahead” with the Navy and “The Few, The Proud” for the Marines. At the end of most military ads, one hears the familiar phrase, “Paid for by the United States Army,” or other service. Translation: Paid for by the taxpayers.

Advertising Age magazine recently conducted a study to identify the top 200 advertisers; the U.S. Army was ranked 84th. The Army’s $60-million annual expenditure topped corporate giants like Wal Mart, BMW and Reebok.

The expensive ad campaigns, however, account for only a small portion, about 6%, of the Pentagon’s annual $2-billion recruiting budget. The remaining 94% is spent to maintain recruiting operations that employ 31,000 individuals in more than 6,000 recruiting offices nationwide. In town squares and shopping malls across America, there are Navy recruiting offices next to Army recruiting offices close to Marine recruiting offices. Many of them operate only part-time, open only one or two days a week, yet rent and support expenses remain costly. Combining them would significantly reduce costs.

These and other unnecessary expenses have contributed to the increasing cost of recruiting. In 1989 the figure was $3,900 per recruit. If the President’s 1993 budget request is approved, this figure would rise to $5,700 per recruit. This steep increase simply makes no sense.

The Pentagon’s recruiting empire can be restructured in many areas to help reduce wasteful spending, and the possibilities should be explored. Efficiency, the buzzword of the 1990s, is the key.

All too often our government compromises taxpayers’ trust by assuming that bigger is better. The entire Pentagon has expressed a commitment to giving the taxpayers “more bang for the buck.” Military recruitment should be no exception.