The Pentagon will halt efforts to collect reenlistment bonuses mistakenly paid out to thousands of California National Guard veterans after an intervention by Secretary of Defense Ash Carter (I wrote about the scandal, here). In a statement released this morning, Carter outlined his order:
First, I have ordered the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to suspend all efforts to collect reimbursement from affected California National Guard members, effective as soon as is practical. This suspension will continue until I am satisfied that our process is working effectively.
Second, I have ordered a team of senior department officials, led by the senior personnel official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Peter Levine, to assess the situation and establish no later than Jan. 1, 2017 a streamlined, centralized process that ensures the fair and equitable treatment of our service members and the rapid resolution of these cases. The objective will be to complete the decision-making process on all cases as soon as possible — and no later than July 1, 2017.
“While some soldiers knew or should have known they were ineligible for benefits they were claiming, many others did not,” Carter’s statement read, concluding: “Ultimately, we will provide for a process that puts as little burden as possible on any soldier who received an improper payment through no fault of his or her own. At the same time, it will respect our important obligation to the taxpayer.”
This is the correct course of action: The veterans who, in good faith, accepted bonuses that they were not eligible for should not be punished a decade later for the government’s mistakes; that said, any guardsmen who “knew or should have known” that they shouldn’t be receiving bonuses should be handled differently. (The precise process would ideally be worked out in the Congress, via legislation — not through executive fiat.)
After the Los Angeles Times broke the story earlier this week, lawmakers in both parties — from Utah Republican Jason Chaffetz, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to California Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader — expressed outrage. And they were right to do so. The incident proves that the public and media can still generate action from our public officials to address problems from time to time — when the proper heat is applied (it didn’t hurt that an election is two weeks away; no politician wants to be seen as sticking it to veterans just days before voters head to the polls).
Now if our appropriately outraged politicians could only get around to addressing the sclerotic, incompetent VA . . . or our entitlement-system time bomb . . . or the horribly mismanaged IRS . . . or . . .