A special commission is studying how Guard and Reserve forces should be organized, deployed and compensated for their expanded role in the war on terrorism and to handle the stress of an open-ended occupation of Iraq.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers want the Commission on National Guard and Reserve to examine closely Defense Department plans for restructuring Army National Guard brigades.

Lawmakers also challenged the department's resistance to improving reserve benefits, and decisions made on critical Guard issues without consulting state governors.

The commission has a year to complete a comprehensive review and deliver final recommendations to Congress.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., chairman of the armed services subcommittee on military personnel, said reserve forces are at risk if the pace of deployments isn't slowed and if benefits aren't enhanced.

Graham asked that the commission's interim report comment on whether a new premium-based health benefit for drilling reservists will help re-enlistments and whether allowing reserve retirement before age 60 could also "have a positive effect."

"If we don't look at doing something like that, we are going to lose people at the 20-year point in droves," Graham warned, "because families are getting stressed to the breaking point.''

Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., co-chairmen of the Senate's 85-member National Guard Caucus, said administration plans to cut Guard force structure, as unveiled with the fiscal 2007 budget, were made without "substantive input" from National Guard leaders.

"We are seeing policy recommendations from the departments of the Army, the Air Force and the secretary of defense that fly in the face of logic," Bond said. The Guard itself, he said, is "treated as a lesser partner."

Bond asked the commission to study proposed legislation from the caucus to give the Guard "more bureaucratic muscle so it does not continue to be pushed around in policy and budget debates within the Pentagon."

One change would make the National Guard chief a four-star officer and member of the Joint Chiefs. Another would provide the National Guard with its own procurement budget, separate from the services, in an arrangement similar to that of the Special Forces Command, Bond said.

Write Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111, milupdate@aol.com or visit www.militaryupdate.com.