The Defense Department has long tried to simplify and reform the reserve duty status system, which has expanded to more than 30 separate statutes scattered across about 20 different titles of federal law. 

This complex system has created pay and benefits inequities and frequent administrative delays when National Guard members and reservists shift between duty statuses.

A new bipartisan bill now seeks to consolidate dozens of duty statuses under which National Guard members and reservists are called to service to just four.

If passed, the Duty Status Reform Act would ensure service members performing assignments in the same category receive the same pay and benefits. 

Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.), the bill’s sponsor, said the effort is his “number one priority returning to Congress.”

“With the current duty status system, service members doing similar jobs often receive significantly less benefits due to them being under different duty statuses. Currently, at any point during activation, a Guardsman can go between up to 10 different duty statuses, resulting in lapses of pay and administrative hurdles. This bipartisan bill fixes existing problems like this and puts active duty under our one category,” Cisneros, a Navy veteran who returned to the House in 2025 after serving from 2019 to 2021, said at a Jan. 8 press conference.

The current system is a product of decades of patch fixes done by Congress spanning from World War II to the Global War on Terror. And while the Defense Department has attempted to overhaul the system over the last two decades, most efforts have failed to gain traction.

“It’s been a very gradual build up process, and so over time, there have been these gaps that have been developed where a reserve component member may be doing duty of one sort right next to reserve component duty person doing that kind of duty right next to them and they’re receiving potentially different pay and benefits. Or it could be the case where they’re on one sort of duty, they come to do their next day of duty, and they’re on a different status, and their underlying pay and benefits may change,” Lisa Harrington, senior operations researcher at RAND, told Federal News Network in August.

The bill builds on a Defense Department–commissioned RAND report that recommended consolidating the reserve duty status system into four categories, including contingency duty, training and support, reserve component duty and remote assignments.

Contingency duty covers deployments and mobilizations where reservists and National Guard members are called to serve, usually involuntarily, for combat operations, national emergencies, disaster response or other missions requiring additional manpower. 

Training and support assignments include required training, administrative assignments or support to other units. 

Reserve component duty, which is most commonly associated with traditional reserve service, includes training periods, administrative assignments and support activities.

Remote assignments are designed to account for duty that can be completed virtually, such as online courses.

“Let me be clear about what this bill does and what this bill does not do. It does not create new entitlements, new pay or new benefits. It does align existing benefits so service members performing the same mission alongside their active duty counterparts receive the same rights, protections and predictability. This is about parity and fairness, not expansion,” retired Maj. Gen. Francis M. McGinn, president of the National Guard Association of the United States, said at the press conference.

It is unclear what strategy the lawmakers plan to pursue to pass the measure, but Cisneros said he has spoken with Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, and plans to meet with HASC Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.).

“I think now is the time to move it forward, and we’re going to keep working to make sure that it does get over across the finish line,” Cisneros said.

Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.), the bill’s cosponsor, said he is “more than cautiously optimistic on the timing that we have here.”

“When you think of a defense dollar, we don’t talk about the totals, but how do we spend a defense dollar in the right way without overspending? But also the very subtle part of this — in the end, if we do it right, it’s about our readiness, but it’s also about the recruiting and retention of those men and women who have not even yet thought about serving,” Bergman said. 

Harrington said the potential cost of the reform might be one of the concerns since accurately predicting how much the reform would ultimately cost is difficult.

“The costs we think are not something that would stop the reform from happening when people understand exactly how the costs play out,” she said.

If you would like to contact this reporter about recent changes in the federal government, please email anastasia.obis@federalnewsnetwork.com or reach out on Signal at (301) 830-2747.

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