Washington ? National Guard officials said Monday that recruiting has accelerated so much in recent months that they expect to expand the Guard even as the Bush administration proposes to shrink it.

The National Guard Bureau, the Pentagon office that administers the Guard, issued a statement outlining a recent turnaround in recruiting and predicting that it will continue to rise this year. The Guard is “aggressively working” to reach the 350,000-troop level by the end of the current budget year on Sept. 30, it said.

The Guard now has about 333,000 soldiers, which is the number the administration proposes to pay for.

It is unusual for a military organization like the Guard Bureau to publicly suggest it is moving in a direction that appears to differ from the administration’s. Any talk of cutting the Guard is politically sensitive because Guard units are controlled by state governors except when they are mobilized by presidential order.

In his 2007 budget proposal to be sent to Congress on Feb. 6, President Bush would pay for a Guard of 333,000 soldiers, compared with its congressionally authorized limit of 350,000.

Army Secretary Francis Harvey has said that if the Guard is able to grow beyond 333,000, the Army would shift money from elsewhere in its budget to pay for the extra soldiers.