Army pays criminals $16m in 2010-2012
Chief Tango sends us a link from the Associated Press which reports that the Army paid $16 million to deserters and folks who were AWOL during the 2010 – 2012 period.
Auditors found that commanders weren’t filling out paperwork on absent soldiers in a timely manner, so the orders to stop pay weren’t being processed and absent soldiers were still being paid. The latest audit comes as the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps are projected to slash $52 billion from the defense budget for the 2014 fiscal year under automatic spending cuts that kicked in March 1.
The Army classifies a deserter as someone who drops from the rolls of a unit after being absent without authority for 30 or more consecutive days. Soldiers who join the military of another country, seek political asylum or live in a foreign country are also considered deserters.
Kutz included in the audit recommendations that the Army develop a strategy for tracking possible desertion cases and possibly initiating criminal actions against deserters who took unearned pay.
I think if I was a commander, I’d be slow to re-start a criminal’s pay, but johnny-on-the-spot to stop his pay.
$14 million for a rifle the Army doesn’t need, $16 million for people who don’t show up for work. This is starting to look like places that the Army can look to cut expenses rather than threatening to cut training and reducing cost of living increases. Not to mention raising healthcare costs to retirees and raiding their surplus. I guess it’s too hard to cut real waste and easier to just make personnel cost cuts.
Category: Big Army
Guess I was “lucky” as far as I know, every unit I was in was very timely when it came to stopping a soldiers pay or getting part of his pay withheld after a ART 15. Hmm, wonder how many service members in that same time period got busted, but didn’t lose any pay?
When I went “AWOL” the Army stopped my pay with the quickness. The funny thing was I wasn’t even AWOL. My orders to Korea got deleted a week into my PCS leave. I re-inprocessed Ft Campbell and went back to work. The next month I got a no pay due because apparantly Korea didn’t get the memo that my orders got deleted and reported me as a no show.
@2 Apparently the military is getting really good at f$cking guys who do their jobs, and not so good at getting rid of those who don’t….things are starting to seem more upside down every day…
Hell, I was UA for 4 hours for fire watch, and I went up for Bn Office Hours!!! They sure as hell took pay out of my pocket for that offence!!! And these fucktards paid these deserters?!?! Fuck me!!! If that’s the case, then the Marine Corps needs to pay me back for the 2 weeks forfeiture of pay!!! With interest from 1987, I’m sure they’d owe me a pretty penny now!!! Just kidding! I fucked up, and paid the price… Shit happens!!! Never did that again!
If this next “peace dividend” or “draw down” or whatever bs name they give it is anything like the last…
I suspect the DoD will require all barrels from both arty and rifles plus bolts from rifles and breach blocks from arty be removed from all inventory and set to a centralized facility to be sold as scrap. Of course, the stuff will never get sold. Most of it will just disappear while the rest of it sits and rots with rust.
Oh, I forgot to add:
The salvage project will be announced as saving 100 million bucks. The facility will cost 200 million to build, but that wont be mentioned.
There will also be a nice set of “no show” jobs for the senator who wins the site location battle to hand out. And… it’ll cost the DoD 50 million bucks a year to maintain the facility.
A little perspective, folks. Between 2010 and 2012, the Army’s military payroll was somewhere around $50 Billion a year (can’t find the exact numbers quickly, but the following document gives figures for 2011 and 2012 – and they average to over $50 billion annually. I’m pretty sure 2010 was about as large).
http://comptroller.defense.gov/defbudget/fy2013/FY13_Green_Book.pdf
$16M / 3 = $5.33 M. That’s less than 0.0107% of the Army’s military payroll.
Yes, that total should be zero. But errors happen. And in the grand scheme of things, this isn’t going to matter much. Financially speaking, it’s like worrying about a missing penny when you desperately need to find another $100 to pay this month’s bills.
So retroactively cancel or amend the orders. It is done all the time
SIGO: the problem is getting the $$$ back if they’ve left the service. Yes, you can have the IRS recoup it for the Federal govt – at least theoretically. But the Army doesn’t see the cash when that happens; it goes back to the Treasury (the appropriation has expired). Add in the cost of collecting it, and it’s almost not worth the trouble.
I’d guess the average amount overpaid is probably around $500. If the average cost of collection (including government labor and any collection agency fees) is more than that, Uncle Sam could actually lose money by trying to collect.
And in any case: given the numbers in the great scheme of things this is like worrying about a 1″ scratch on your car’s bumper when the engine is on fire.
True, had this happen to me and it wasn’t my fault. There are ways other than going to the Treasury. We would collect directly. This was in the Guard and we would find where they live then send the Sheriff to collect.
This falls directly on sloppy lazy unknowing uncaring company commanders. I had the distinct pleasure of being a rear D 1SG with a CW4 as a commander. We never had a problem stopping the pay of a troop gone more than 72 hours. Took a little research & a friend @ JAG, but that is part of the job
Sounds like their units were stuck with some PAC folks that gave their computer solitaire game a higher priority than doing their jobs!
@12 It is on the company commander to stop the pay of an AWOL soldier. If the PAC clerk doesn’t get the paperwork from the company, then he or she can’t do anything. If the CO has done the paperwork and the next month sees nothing has changed, he can go kick some ass at S1 or Finance. Either way its usually laziness on the company commander that leads to these errors. The commander receives 6 or 7 documents on the first of every month from the S1 pertaining to flags, promotions, duty status, and financial status of his troops. He has to sign them and I’ve seen plenty that don’t even read them.