HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 30, 2003
   
Abolish Selective Service

Mr. Speaker, I am today introducing legislation to repeal the Selective Service Act
and related parts of the US Code.  The Department of Defense, in response to recent calls to reinstate the draft, has confirmed that conscription serves no military need. This is only the most recent confirmation that the draft, and thus the Selective Service system, serves no military purpose. In 1999, then-Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera, in a speech before the National Press Club, admitted that "Today, with our smaller, post-Cold War armed forces, our stronger volunteer tradition and our need for longer terms of service to get a good return on the high, up-front training costs, it would be even harder to fashion a fair draft."  

Obviously, if there is no military need for the draft, then there is no need for Selective Service registration.  Furthermore, Mr. Speaker, Selective Service registration is an outdated and outmoded system, which has been made obsolete by technological advances. 

In fact, in 1993 the Department of Defense issued a report stating that registration could be stopped "with no effect on military mobilization and no measurable effect on the time it would take to mobilize, and no measurable effect on military recruitment." Yet the American taxpayer has been forced to spend over $500 million dollars on an outdated system "with no measurable effect on military mobilization!"

Shutting down Selective Service will give taxpayers a break without adversely affecting military efforts. Shutting down Selective Service will also end a program that violates the very principals of individual liberty our nation was founded upon.  The moral case against the draft was eloquently expressed by former President Ronald Regan in the publication Human Events in 1979:  “...it [conscription] rests on the assumption that your kids belong to the state. If we buy that assumption then it is for the state -- not for parents, the community, the religious institutions or teachers -- to decide who shall have what values and who shall do what work, when, where and how in our society. That assumption isn’t a new one. The Nazis thought it was a great idea.”

I hope all my colleagues to join me in working to shut down this un-American relic of a bygone era and help realize the financial savings and the gains to individual liberties that can be achieved by ending Selective Service registration.