Just when you are tempted to think that the kind of bureaucratic lunacy that inspired Joseph Heller to write “Catch-22” had been entirely eradicated, along comes an un-named financial wizard to demand that soldiers forced to leave the service early by the severity of their wounds pay back the “unearned” portion of their enlistment bonuses:
The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.
To get people to sign up, the military gives enlistment bonuses up to $30,000 in some cases.
Now men and women who have lost arms, legs, eyesight, hearing and can no longer serve are being ordered to pay some of that money back.
One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills… Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.
A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.
There’s a better case for waterboarding than those we’ve previously discussed. Just to try and find out what that idiot was really thinking.
Update: Wisdom prevails -
A military spokesman told KDKA’s Marty Griffin the bill sent to Fox was a mistake.
Griffin asked Army Spokesperson Major Nathan Banks if the government was taking on Fox’s case.
Banks said via phone, “We are. We are … definitely working it out. We have seen where the problems have been made, the system, and we’re just making – you know, give us the opportunity to make a wrong a right.”
Major Banks says Fox will not have to pay back his bonus.
That’s more like it.
Lex
That pretty well makes Congress and all their tom-foolery look good. Is it April Fools Day or something? That’s so beyond stupid … that I can’t say any more.
grrrrrRRROAARRRRR!!!!!
I still love this quote from Phib’s place:
“If I was held accountable for retaining personnel I would shoot every person in Millington and OPNAV. You just can’t find motivators like that without flipping over rocks.”
Except this sounds like a DFAS bureaucrat suffering in the snows of Cleveland….
Sir,
Don’t get me wrong from comments below. Nothing will replace the lost eyesight or restore a permanent back injury.
I suspect rigid bureaucratic (perhaps even automated) rules in effect. And now this is blossoming in the talk radio and blogosphere based on the Jordan Fox story– I’ve seen and heard about it half a dozen times today, and first read about it last night on the blog Silentrunning.tv.
As I commented there, probably insensitively, the next step for someone injured severely in the service (not necessarily war) is to enter the VA system, including lifelong disability payments of approximately $12/percent/month. I base that on the fact that my wife is 40% disabled due to injuries received on active duty in the Navy and gets about $500/month for it. We weren’t at war, just “strong Naval presence near the Persian Gulf during the Iran/Iraq war.” (Seems I saw you there, too.)
Also, I believe 50% disability is a threshold that enables access to the VA system of health, (such as it is).
SGLI or whatever they call it nowadays– the insurance servicemembers are STRONGLY encouraged to buy before going someplace dangerous– doesn’t strictly factor in, since it is voluntary, but if it was used, there are many permutations about various disabilities that result in payouts of multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I tried to read the KDKA story, but I have a feeling their servers have been fried, so I’ve only seen the excerpts like yours. Is there any mention of these other points?
Yeah, the “bean counters” are stupid to try to recoup $3000 from a recently disabled vet. I’ve seen lots of stupid things in government. But so many are making hay of this, that many more will miss the bigger picture. I even heard a caller here locally (NM) invoke his BDS. Paraquote (not a paraphrase, but the key words I remember): “All you hicks and rednecks that voted for Bush, this is your fault.”
This story has touched a lot of emotional nerves across the spectrum. I believe it was framed to do exactly that, and was quite successful. “How MEAN we are to our wounded warriors!”
Shipmates,
Well, it’s certainly along the lines of what Social Security does. If you die before the last day of the month, your estate is required to return the pro-rated portion of that month’s Social Security check.
Trust me, they WILL collect it. After my mother passed away, my father failed to return the 1/2 mo th’s SS payment in the required amount of time. Social Security simply deducted it from HIS check the following month.
Forget that he was in his mid-80’s and in mourning. Forget all the other things he had to deal with regarding my mother’s estate.
Cold-hearted bastards.
Reese, what does SGLI have to do with the issue? As I understand it, one can’t actually collect on their own SGLI, as you’d have to be dead (that’s why you list beneficiaries). Oh, and check out the SGLI myths on their website, as long as they received their monthly premium, the payout is virtually a lock.
As for the bean counters asking an injured member to pay back the bonus, that can only be described as shameful at best. Just when some headway is being recognized in the tight sphincter crowds, some pinhead comes along and sends the PR Department back to square one…
This ruthless and stupid approach to the most honored among those who served their country is executed every single day by an uncaring bureaucracy that only knows law, statutes, code and nothing of honor or fair and just treatment for those who pay the greatest sacrifices in the service of the nation.
Yet those stubborn and stupid bureaucrats labor under the guidance and supervision of men and women even more detached from what the nation owes to these men and women and are more concerned by what these wounded veterans owe the nation.
It is an evil system perpetuated by uncaring civil servants and it deserves to be condemned. These were the same uncaring and thoughtless rear echelon types that demanded that gravely wounded soldiers who were literally cut from their armor and uniforms in an ultimately, at huge cost and effort to save their lives, must reimburse the government for the cost of those uniforms, body armor, rifles and nightvision goggles that remained on the battlefield and were lost in combat.
There are very few stupid policies such as this one that survive the painful scrutiny of a caring Flag or General Officer and none that survive the even more painful scrutiny of a genuinely caring Congressional inquiry into such stupid and self defeating practices.
It is shameful that it happens once. It is a systematic evil and perversion of what America stands for that we keep reading these stories and that nobody raises a hand to stop it.
If you are concerned that these practices have been allowed to perpetuate themselves in the military itself, please right your Congressman and your Senators and demand that they look into this and fire everybody involved in this kind of spitting on our wounded veterans. Let’s leave the spitting to the anti-war crowd not to our “own” bureaucracy.
By each story such as this is our recruiting diminished. We swear an oath to defend the country and anybody who reads this kind of thing understands in the most profound way that the state does not share our understanding of the covenant of arms and will toss us aside like a used condom when by our efforts and struggle we find ourselves in no way able to live up to the oath because we suffered severely in the execution of that oath.
I find myself a little angry each time I read these stories.
Curtis
AW1, I think that the only thing government folks are good at, and that they should be allowed and encouraged to do, is to be cold-hearted bastards.
How. Ever. The .gov should act as cold-hearted bastards only against foreign enemies, or obvious criminals in our own country. If they stray from those duties, they are exceeding their authority.
As P. J. O’Rourke put it, and I hate to say it, the only thing governments are really any good at is killing people.
Let us keep our government within its Constitutional bounds, so that its hired killers, like Lex, will only kill people who (as the commonplace has it) *needed killin’*
Sorry, Lee. I thought the SGLI included disability– but ‘L’ is for ‘life.’ I’m think of the insurance where different types of disabilities are defined: one major extremity, two major extremities, one or two eyes, etc. Cold and calculating, but the nature of such things.
Curtis, I think you hit it: “By each story such as this is our recruiting diminished.” This story, not the bureaucratic stupidity that enables the story, is an attack. It hurts. It hurts me in my heart. It hurts recruiting: “Those guys don’t really mean the signing bonus! They just wanna get me out there as cannon fodder, then they’ll demand the money back. Service sucks. America sucks.” Harm.
The way I see it, an able-bodied seaman signed up, got his bonus as part of that contract, anything that makes him less than able-bodied in the course of his duties is the responsibility of the service, not the seaman. Contract law should decide this in his favor.
As for the accountant who came up with the idea, emotion wishes a chance to break his knees and see how he likes the idea, but rationality wins out and a few hours in front of a Board of Inquiry should suffice. I’d still like the shot at his knees, you understand, but I temper myself.
When yours is the only seat at the table without a water glass those hours get mighty long, and one becomes a bit more adaptive towards the concerns expressed by the other side.
– Max
Anyone got a name, email,snailmail addy? Time to bury some asshole in electronc and real paper, not to mention a LOT of really bad PR.
I don’t really know what to say, but I feel like I have to say something! This is just plain wrong. But before we go throw out the baby with the bathwater, let’s remember that by a huge margin, most of those folks in Millington and Cleveland are honest, hardworking folks doing their best to make a living and support their families. Few of them make policy. I can tell you that when I worked at OPNAV during the 80’s I was never overwhelmed by the dedication and ingenuity of my civilian counterparts… but neither were they evil or malicious. They simply did not have as much on the table as I did.
If you want to make changes, get your congressional representation involved. If we can get some of the folks on both sides of the aisle to remember that they are there to do OUR bidding, not to push their own agenda, maybe we can get something done. If not, vote dammit! Yeah, I’m talking to you Waxman, Kerry, Gore, Kennedy, etc.
Well heck, Mr. Fox didn’t finish his commitment, so he’s in vi0lation of his contract with the armed forces, right?
Never mind that he was permanently disabled fighting for his country – that just doesn’t matter when talking about the almight bottom line, does it.
Beyond stupid – Michelle you are so right. It’s just indefensible.
sharing righteous outrage, yet i am compelled to clarify one thing as mentioned by Curtis….
not denying that there have been stupid isolated anecdotes of pecuniary liability for equipment loss levied against evac-d soldiers, BUT… those are isolated anecdotes of stupidity. everyone involved in the system of property accountability system recognizes (and uses) the provisions for battlefield losses. that some isolated idiots pushed paper the wrong direction in a few instances doesn’t surprise me, but these instances are corrected when identified.
back on main topic: just as the services are now instituting a command driven system for ensuring that wounded warriors are incorporated into a strata of chain of command and hospital unit membership, these idiotic burps and hiccups should be greatly minimized.
BEAN COUNTERS!!! The root of all that is wrong with DoD.
Byron, upper left-hand corner at this site: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/
I’m betting it’s automated – a computer in finance noted that he didn’t finish enough of his committment, nobody ever thought of coding a reason field that would explain why and short-circuit an automated letter requesting recoupment of the bonus.
This is a good outcome for Fox but from what I’ve been reading around the blogs and comment sections is that thousands of other vets are in the same boat and it’s been going on since possibly 2004. Certainly for the last year. I’ve seen links to other stories that didn’t get the same attention. I’ve also heard the policy is actually written into the contract for the bonus. I hope everyone on both sides of the aisle keeps an eye on this and not let up until ALL our soldiers are protected from such an inhumane policy.
I surfed around some of the “usual suspect” blogs yesterday for commentary and links on this story (memeorandum was STUFFED with ‘em) and found the real reason for this bureaucratic frick-up: Bushitler and the Eeeevil Rethuglicans. You’d think Dubya signed the restitution order hisownself based on comments in the fever swamp.
It took all the restraint I had to not drop a comment. Until I remembered the ol’ saw about “annoying the pig.”
Cap’n, we just need someone, someone like you, to be an “Ombudsman for Common Sense”.
When will the nonsense stop without someone to say, “NO, this just won’t pass the test!”
ARMY WRONG
according to a good friend that i *know* works at a DFAS (because he helped me with an issue)had this to say:
“Not true by any means. This young soldier obviously fell thru the cracks
somehow. There is a special program run by DFAS called the Wounded Warrior
Pay Management Program that is supposed to prevent this from happening. Any
debts for soldiers who are wounded in SWA are to be automatically submitted
to HRC for remission. Someone on a local installation that works the WWPMP
at the local DMPO (finance office) is probably out of a job by now.”
never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity.
Cool…nothing brings me to a strong boil than hearing about our service members getting screwed into the wall by plain old fashioned stupidity and avarice. Glad to hear things are being made right.