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The Pentagon recently asked nearly 10,000 soldiers to repay excessive bonuses they were given for re-enlisting in the California National Guard between 2007 and 2009 amid the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress was notified of the problem in 2014, but representatives failed to pass a provision that would allow the Defense Secretary to waive the repayments.
Some representatives claim that the California National Guard failed to convey the scale of the repayments issue or make it a congressional priority. An outraged and bipartisan group of legislators have called for quick action and full forgiveness of the overpayments (estimated to be around $70 million). On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter and President Obama have promised to resolve the issue, even as officials acknowledge that the issue may extend to other states:
President Obama has told the Defense Department to expedite its review of nearly 10,000 California National Guard soldiers who have been ordered to repay enlistment bonuses improperly given a decade ago, but he is not backing growing calls for Congress to waive the debts, the White House said Tuesday. The comments by White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggest the administration is running into legal and policy roadblocks as it struggles to handle a public relations headache for the Pentagon, the National Guard and members of Congress who were caught off guard by the scope of the problem.
[...] California Guard officials say they informed California lawmakers about the scale of the debts in 2014, telling them in a list of legislative priorities sent to each House office and the House Armed Services Committee that "thousands of soldiers have inadvertently incurred debt, through no fault of their own because of faulty Army recruiting or accounting practices."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tisI on Thursday October 27 2016, @02:13PM
Those assholes started those wars and made the deals with the servicemen to get them to reenlist. They can't welch out on a deal they made. Fuck em.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself."
(Score: 1) by Francis on Thursday October 27 2016, @02:28PM
Indeed. Ultimately, the money will be returned in all cases, it's just a question of how much it costs.
I'm not personally a fan of all the soldier worship that goes on, but this is absolutely ridiculous. As long as the contracts they signed granted them the money they were paid, they should be allowed to keep the money. Even in cases where that's not the case, it seems like this should have been dealt with years ago. Having the government trying to claw back money like this just sucks.
At this point, it's doubtful that there's any recourse for those affected. I had the state try to claw back some money years after the fact. It wasn't any fun either, and since they waited so many years, the records necessary to support the claim had long since been destroyed. Ultimately, I just refused to pay and they haven't actually provided me with any evidence that the debt existed at any time. But, since the state is immune to small claims court, there wasn't any recourse other than to pay up or refuse to pay and count on them not being willing to try to collect.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @04:02PM
The money here will not be repaid, largely due to the soldier worship you mentioned, and also that it is an election year.
One thing you and many others here need to realize is that all the cases where people owe are the same. They are separate records in a database, or back in the day, separate files in a file cabinet. The people who are tasked for recovering money owed don't have discretion to say, "well, this is a small amount so I will just close it out." This stuff can be fixed, but you need the proper authorizations to just waive it away. This is the reason I suspect the White House is being cautious because it is a legal issue. The people who are off the cuff angry about this would be the same ones who would get angry about waste, fraud, and abuse if money owed could just be waived away at the whim of the people who do this accounting.