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Originally Posted by rubberneck
It seems just like yesterday her husband was doing everything in his power to reduce the size of the Army. How ironic.
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To be (somewhat) fair, while he may have been doing all in his power, he faced a Republican Congress and did not accomplish much. The big reductions in the size of the Army are more a legacy of the administration of Bush
pere.
Bush's first defense authorization act, for fiscal year 1990 (Public Law 101-189, signed Nov. 29, 1989) reduced Army authorized endstrength to 764,021. I am not sure how much of a reduction from Reagan's last defense authorization act this was, as I cannot find FY89 endstrengths online, but it was a reduction, as 2nd Armored Division began inactivating in FY90.
Bush's next defense authorization act was signed during the Desert Shield build-up, in November 1990 (P.L. 101-510). It reduced Army end strength for FY91 to 675,669, an 11.5% decrease.
The next two years, the end strength was further reduced to 660,200 and then 598,900.
Clinton's first defense authorization act chopped it further, setting FY94 Army end strength at 540,000. The next year, it dropped to 510,000.
Despite the GOP taking control of Congress, authorized strength fell again for FY96 to 495,000. It stayed there for the next several years, going down to 480,000 in FY99. It has stayed at 480,000 since.
Bush
pere inherited an Army of almost 800,000 and reduced it by 25% to 600,000 in four years. Clinton inherited a 600,000-man Army and reduced it by 20% to 480,000 in eight years. Bush
fils inherited an Army of 480,000 and has kept it basically the same (there have been tiny increases in the other services).
This doesn't exonerate Clinton, of course. The reductions in the Bush years were rapid and precipitous, but they were of an Army which had increased as a result of the Reagan defense buildup, and with the Soviet collapse, some reduction was justified and could be absorbed. But once the floor was set (based on the two-MRC strategy), the Clinton Administration just kept lowering the floor.