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posted by martyb on Thursday October 27 2016, @11:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the Between-Scylla-and-Charybdis dept.

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."


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @11:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @11:56PM (#419636)

    They basically pulled this on the Revolutionary Army vets who returned from the war only to have the merchants of America (who many of them were indebted to since they were mostly subsistence farmers) demand repayment since trade with Europe came to a halt over the merchants defaulting on THEIR many loans from countries antagonistic to Britain who helped financially support the colonies departure from the Crown.

    Long story short: Many of those vets ended up in debtor's prison or destitute as a result of actions of both the merchants and government, who made unfavorable deals with European parties in order to win, then pushed the consequences of those deals onto the backs of the little people who weren't in a favorable position to argue against them.

    People act like this is some amazing modern miscarriage of justice, but in reality it has been going on since more or less the founding of the country, much like the National Anthem, with some historical revisionism to help the plebs forget what it used to mean to be american in order to shore up the 'high ground' we claim to stand on.

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