VA Agreement Pays $400Million in Bonuses

[longknife]

I knew there was something fishy about this bill. There just HAD to be some sort of trash included in the Senate Dimocrats are going along with it!

Paying 1¢ in bonuses to anyone in the DVA is a joke and insult to every veteran than screwed over.

Read more @ VA Officials Will Get Millions of Dollars in Bonuses Under House-Senate Agreement | TheBlaze.com

 

[waltky]

Compromise reached to Help Guardsmen Ordered to Repay Bonuses...

Lawmakers Reach Compromise to Help Guardsmen Ordered to Repay Bonuses
Nov 30, 2016 | WASHINGTON-- House and Senate negotiators reached a compromise that would permit the Pentagon to forgive debts owed by National Guard soldiers.

House and Senate negotiators announced a compromise Tuesday that would permit the Pentagon to forgive debts owed by thousands of California National Guard soldiers who received improper bonuses during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The agreement, included in a defense bill due to be voted on by the House on Friday and the Senate next week, seeks to strike a balance between the Pentagon's concerns about fraud in the bonus system and lawmakers' attempts to resolve a scandal that has hurt thousands of military veterans and sparked a public furor. The compromise calls on the Pentagon to forgive the enlistment bonuses and student loan benefits unless the soldier who received the money "knew or reasonably should have known" that he or she was ineligible for it.

The provision stops short of requiring the Pentagon to forgive debts owed by all California Guard soldiers as long as they fulfilled the terms of their enlistment contracts and did not commit fraud -- a far more sweeping waiver that members of the California delegation had proposed. But by placing the burden on the Pentagon to contact the soldiers and prove that each was ineligible, the compromise provision is likely to result in forgiveness of the debts for most of the 9,700 soldiers ordered to repay some or all of their re-enlistment incentive payments from 2004 to 2015, according to lawmakers. "This largely meets the needs of the soldiers who accepted their bonuses in good faith, as the vast majority of them did," said Rep. Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif. "It should give these soldiers peace of mind during the holidays that the Pentagon won't claw them back."

Members of the California National Guard stand in formation before undertaking operations on California's Southern border​

Under the compromise, if the Pentagon forgives a soldier's debts, it would have to inform credit agencies to correct any adverse effect on credit scores that could affect applications for car loans, mortgages and other debts. The Los Angeles Times/Tribune Washington Bureau reported last month that the Pentagon was demanding repayment of enlistment bonuses given to California Guard soldiers to help fill enlistment quotas for the wars. Many of the soldiers served in combat, and some returned with severe injuries. Many of the soldiers were told to repay bonuses of $15,000 or more years after they had completed their military service. Student loan repayments, which were also given out improperly to soldiers with educational loans, sometimes totaled as much as $50,000.

In response to a public outcry, and at the urging of the White House, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter ordered a suspension of the repayment program Oct. 26 and set up an internal appeals process to review the debts by July. The congressional compromise would make it mandatory that the Pentagon completes its review on that timetable. It would also require the Defense Department to refund any repayments already made by soldiers as long as they were not guilty of fraud.

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[waltky]

Granny don't understand how it's a bonus - if ya gotta pay it back?...

Hundreds of California Guardsmen Must Still Pay Back Bonuses
Jan 03, 2017 | Only a few hundred of the California Guardsmen who wrongly received bonuses will have to pay back the money, the Pentagon said.

The vast majority of the estimated 17,500 soldiers who mistakenly received bonuses before 2011 won't have to pay the money back and those who did will be reimbursed, a top Defense Department official said. Instead, the Defense Department was focusing on "only a few hundred cases" of soldiers who "knew or should have known" that they were wrongly receiving re-enlistment and student loan bonuses. They now face the possibility of having their cases heard by the Army Board for the Correction of Military Records, said Peter Levine, the acting undersecretary for personnel and readiness.

Recouping money wrongly paid out is a "fact of life" in the military, Levine said, but the vast majority of the California National Guard soldiers "may have been misled" into taking the bonuses and their debts will be forgiven. "If the service members fulfilled their service commitment and there's no obvious reason to believe that they knew or should have known that it was an erroneous payment, then we don't need further review to get rid of that case," Levine said at a Pentagon briefing. Those who honestly took the bonuses and then paid back the government will be reimbursed, Levine said. The review of cases and the reimbursements should be completed by July, he added.

Soldiers of the California National Guard's 40th Infantry Division rehearsing an air assault mission at Fort Hunter Liggett​

Soldiers who have been cleared should be getting notification of the dismissal of their cases within a month, Levine said. In addition, the Pentagon will notify credit bureaus and attempt to help any troops whose credit was adversely impacted by the bonus errors that mainly resulted from fraud committed by Guard administrators. Despite reports that wrongful bonus payments were widespread in other states, Levine said the issue is largely limited to California. He said his review "determined there was no other state in which there was the kind of massive problem there was in California. We don't see more than few dozen [cases] in any other state." The bonus issue resulted from the Pentagon policy to boost incentives for re-enlistment during the height of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to meet the demand for troops. According to department figures, the Army National Guard spent $3.2 billion for its Selected Reserve Incentive Program from 2005 to 2010. The cost to taxpayers from errors in the program was expected to amount to "a few million dollars," Levine said.

Army audits found that the authority to issue bonuses was held by state "incentives managers," who worked with little supervision. In California at the time, Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe was the sole person in the California Guard responsible for approving bonuses. In 2011, she pleaded guilty in federal court to filing false claims and was sentenced to 30 months in prison. In October, as the California National Guard scandal gained national attention, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter named Levine to conduct a review and institute reforms. Carter directed him to ensure the "fair and equitable treatment of our service members. We are on track to meet all those objectives," he said.

Hundreds of California Guardsmen Must Still Pay Back Bonuses | Military.com

 

[OKTexas]

I knew there was something fishy about this bill. There just HAD to be some sort of trash included in the Senate Dimocrats are going along with it!

Paying 1¢ in bonuses to anyone in the DVA is a joke and insult to every veteran than screwed over.

Read more @ VA Officials Will Get Millions of Dollars in Bonuses Under House-Senate Agreement | TheBlaze.com

I can think of a lot of people at VA I'd like to see get bonuses. None are administrators.