Steve's No Direction Home Page

by hilzoy

Before this administration took office, I would have thought that the one thing I could count on Republicans to do right was to take care of the basic needs of our men and women in uniform. "Help is on the way", Bush said. I suppose I should have remembered that he came from the same party that told us (falsely) that "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help'", and taken it as a threat. Leaving aside the little matter of sending them off to fight a needless war without bothering to take care of such minor details as planning for the occupation, we've seen the guard and reserves stretched to the breaking point, stop-loss orders, Humvees with inadequate protection, and soldiers buying their own body armor. So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by this:

"His hand had been blown off in Iraq, his body pierced by shrapnel. He could not walk. Robert Loria was flown home for a long recovery at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he tried to bear up against intense physical pain and reimagine his life's possibilities. The last thing on his mind, he said, was whether the Army had correctly adjusted his pay rate -- downgrading it because he was out of the war zone -- or whether his combat gear had been accounted for properly: his Kevlar helmet, his suspenders, his rucksack.

But nine months after Loria was wounded, the Army garnished his wages and then, as he prepared to leave the service, hit him with a $6,200 debt. That was just before last Christmas, and several lawmakers scrambled to help. This spring, a collection agency started calling. He owed another $646 for military housing.

"I was shocked," recalled Loria, now 28 and medically retired from the Army. "After everything that went on, they still had the nerve to ask me for money."

Although Loria's problems may be striking on their own, the Army has recently identified 331 other soldiers who have been hit with military debt after being wounded at war. The new analysis comes as the United States has more wounded troops than at any time since the Vietnam War, with thousands suffering serious injury in Iraq or Afghanistan. (...)

At the root of the problem is an outdated Defense Department computer system, which does not automatically link pay and personnel records. This creates numerous pay errors -- and overpayments become debts, said Gregory D. Kutz, the GAO's managing director for forensic audits and special investigations. "They've been trying to modernize it since the mid-1990s," he said. "They have been unsuccessful."

No one can say how many troops have pay problems across the military, Kutz said, but the GAO has found that, in certain Army National Guard and Reserve units, more than 90 percent of soldiers have had at least one overpayment or underpayment during deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. Steps have since been taken to improve the system, but the problem will not be eliminated, Kutz said, until the larger computer system is reengineered.

Typically, troops get a boost in pay while in combat. When they come home, the system can take extra weeks to catch up with the change, and some people are overpaid. For wounded troops -- still adjusting to their injuries and changed futures -- a debt notice can be another bitter discovery. (...)

Tyson Johnson, 24, of Prichard, Ala., was stunned after being struck by a mortar round in Iraq to find a bill waiting for him when he came home from the hospital. It was for $2,700, the bonus he had been given when he enlisted. "I definitely felt betrayed, because I went over there and almost lost my life," said Johnson, a corporal when he was injured. His debt was resolved after his story made news. "I really didn't need more stress."

Sgt. Gary Dowd, 28, was caught in an ambush 30 miles north of Tikrit, Iraq, in 2003 and suffered multiple injuries, losing his left hand and forearm. After 13 months of treatment, he retired from the Army early this year. Shortly afterward, he received a letter at his home in Tampa asking him to repay $600 for a survivor-benefit insurance plan he had opted out of when he signed his deployment papers. There was no number on the bill to call -- no way to protest. "I was pretty irked that they thought I owed them something," he said. "I feel like I've given them enough.""

Amazing. Somehow or other, in the rush to pass tax cuts for the rich, the Congress might have found time to try to force action on this. Or perhaps the President could have taken time out of his busy schedule of scripted meetings pushing his doomed Social Security plan to groups of pre-screened supporters, interspersed with weeks of brush-cutting, or even taken the time he would normally have spent on one mountain bike ride, to call someone into his office and make it clear that it was just not acceptable to send creditors after wounded soldiers on the grounds that they had lost a limb before serving the full term specified in their signing bonus.

But, as our President said: "I think it's also important for me to go on with my life, to keep a balanced life." More important, apparently, than making sure that the men and women who were wounded in his war can recover without the army siccing collection agencies on them.