Vincent J. Curtis
24 Oct 2016
For thousands of years, experienced soldiers have been paid
bounties for re-enlisting. Rather than
see trained, experienced men leave the service, armies throughout history have
offered retention bonuses, or bounties, for those soldiers to stay in the
service. Usually this occurs in time of
need, when those soldier’s skills are greatly in need, time is short, and there
is not enough time to recruit and train replacements. Sometimes, there may not even be
replacements. The service has to cut a
deal, and it sucks to be a buyer in a seller’s market.
Thus when a soldier is offered a retention bonus, he has to
take it as on the up and up. He gets his
money and he does his extra time. It is
not in his power to check to make sure that the people offering him the cash
are lawfully entitled to do so. If he
gets the cash from the service, that’s good enough for him. He does the time.
It does the service no good to develop the reputation of
fraud and faithlessness: giving the
money, and then, after the extra time is served, asking for it back. With
interest.
The Los Angeles Times
is reporting on the cases of thousands of National Guard soldiers from
California who are being harassed to return retention bonuses they were paid a
decade ago, and that they were offered to do another tour of Iraq or
Afghanistan. The Bush Administration
paid the bonuses, and the Obama Administration is asking for it back. Some of the bonuses amounted to $15,000 -
cheap when you consider the cost of recruiting and training a replacement.
The Times reports
as follows:
“Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many
of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large
enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and
tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the
California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.
Investigations
have determined that lack of oversight allowed for
widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under
pressure to meet enlistment targets.
But soldiers say the military
is reneging on 10-year-old agreements and imposing severe financial hardship on
veterans whose only mistake was to accept bonuses offered when the Pentagon
needed to fill the ranks.
“These bonuses were used to keep people in,” said
Christopher Van Meter, a 42-year-old former Army captain and Iraq veteran from
Manteca, Calif., who says he refinanced his home mortgage to repay
$25,000 in reenlistment bonuses and $21,000 in student loan repayments that the
Army says he should not have received. “People like me just got screwed.”
In Iraq, Van Meter was thrown from an armored vehicle turret
— and later awarded a Purple Heart for his combat injuries — after the
vehicle detonated a buried roadside bomb.
Susan Haley, a Los Angeles native and former Army master
sergeant who deployed to Afghanistan in 2008, said she sends the Pentagon $650
a month — a quarter of her family’s income — to pay down $20,500 in bonuses
that the Guard says were given to her improperly.
“I feel totally betrayed,” said Haley, 47, who served
26 years in the Army along with her husband and oldest son, a medic who
lost a leg in combat in Afghanistan.
Haley, who now lives in Kempner,
Texas, worries they may have to sell their house to repay the
bonuses. “They’ll get their money, but I want those years back,” she said,
referring to her six-year reenlistment.”
These veterans have every right to feel betrayed, because
the country they served committed fraud against them. They had a contract. The papers were signed and the money was
paid. That’s a contract. You can ask for the money back, but you can’t
give the time back. If the veteran had
tried to bail, you can be sure the government would be enforcing its rights.
Why did it take a decade to find this out? If it was discovered while these people were in
the midst of serving their re-enlistment tours, why weren’t they offered the
chance to leave while the damage was minimal?
Who was the pencil-neck who determined to ask for the money back?
Who were these “officials” who authorized the money and cut
the check? Why aren’t these “officials”
being charged with a crime, or being made to repay the money personally? Lack of oversight is a damned excuse. Who committed the failure of oversight? Why isn’t that supervisor on the legal hook –
after all they allowed the unauthorized expenditure of public funds for
fraudulent purposes.
Why aren’t they being held accountable for the money? The CEO of Wells Fargo was forced to resign
and forego millions in pay and bonuses for the same kind of thing. He was chastised twice before the Congress,
and the dollar fraud involved with Wells Fargo was a tenth the size of the
fraud committed against U.S. veterans by their own government.
The veterans acted in good faith. Why can’t the U.S. government act in good
faith towards its veterans? Why isn’t
there anyone in the U.S. government saying this is plain wrong, and fixing it? They demanded retribution and got it in the
case of Wells Fargo!
What do Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have to say about
this travesty? What will they pledge to
do about it?
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