Members of the West Virginia National Guard patrol around the Lincoln Memorial in Washington on Aug. 26, 2025. (Eric Kayne/Stars and Stripes)
WASHINGTON — A complex duty status system for Reserve and National Guard forces would be reduced from about 30 duty statuses to four under a bipartisan bill introduced in the House on Thursday to ensure equitable benefits and pay.
The Duty Status Reform Act seeks to simplify an overly burdensome system that lawmakers blame for major disparities in health care, pay and benefits such as the post-9/11 G.I. bill when troops move from one type of military service to another.
The current framework, a culmination of various congressional patch fixes spanning from World War II to the Global War on Terror, means service members performing similar assignments often receive different benefits.
It also causes interruptions in pay, creates budgeting difficulties that make it harder to correctly allocate resources and complicates the work of commanders who need to quickly and easily call up service members for duty, according to lawmakers.
Rep. Gil Cisneros, D-Calif., said efforts to resolve the issue began more than 20 years ago and continued during his tenure as an undersecretary overseeing the military’s personnel and readiness in former President Joe Biden’s Defense Department.
“This was my No. 1 priority returning to Congress,” said Cisneros, a Navy veteran who served in the House from 2019 to 2021 and returned in 2025. “Having worked on this issue during my time at the Pentagon, I learned about the complexity of the current duty status system and how it hurts our readiness and quality of life for service members.”
The bill proposes creating four broad service categories: Contingency Duty, Training and Support, Reserve Component Duty and Remote Assignments.
Contingency duty covers deployments for missions such as responding to a national emergency or a natural disaster. Training and support includes required training, administrative assignments and support to reserve units. Reserve component duty represents traditional partial-day reserve service. Remote assignments refer to online learning and other virtual duties.
Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Mich., described the legislation as “common sense” and said it cuts through “decades of red tape” to ensure members of the Reserve and National Guard get “consistent benefits, clear orders and the support they’ve earned.”
In addition to Bergman and Cisneros, the bill is also co-sponsored by Reps. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., and Sam Graves, R-Mo.
Several military organizations have endorsed the measure. The National Guard Association of the United States said it would clean up nearly 300 laws, save taxpayer dollars, clear up confusion for service members and remove administrative burdens.
When statuses are clear, pay is timely and health care coverage is continuous “commanders can focus on the mission instead of paperwork,” said Francis M. McGinn, a retired Massachusetts Army National Guard two-star general who now serves as president of the National Guard association.
“That will be the result of this legislation,” he said.
