Over 20,000 soldiers have been evacuated from Iraq because of wounds or injuries. Those soldiers were having such a hard time getting paid properly that one Army finance unit initiated a random audit of 123 wounded soldiers. The picture wasn't pretty.
As a result of government error, a total of $77,000 of debt was created for the 123 soldiers involved in the audit. In addition, soldiers were shorted a total of over $24,000 in the three entitlements that were examined by the audit team. Overal, 82% of the soldiers involved in the audit had significant errors in pay.
The full report is here (PDF).
The audit is proof that the Army is taking steps to address the problem, but this leaked report paints a grim picture of a broken system and a military support infrastructure unprepared for the crush of wounded and injured. It also notes that efforts to move rear-support units to the front lines, and replace those support jobs with civilians, isn't going so well.
In the fall of 2003, the Department of Defense began the process of eliminating 10,000 positions filled by soldiers in various D0D agencies in favor of using DoD civilians or contractors to perform the functions formerly accomplished by military personnel. The FY2005 budget included funding to elimiinate another 10,000 service members from positioons deemed to be better suited to civilians, with the goal of moving soldiers to deployable (MTOE) unites. In 2004, finance soldiers (MOS 44C) were told that Defense Military Pay Offices (DMPOs) were no longer available as a duty assignment. At the same time, the Army also prohibited soldiers in the rank of E4 or below serving their first enlistment to re-enlist as a finance specialist [...]
The National Capital Region Defense Military Pay Office, the office responsible for operations at Walter Reed, was no exception to the new policy. Despite the influx of close to 3,000 patients from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan flowing into the medical facility and repeated requests from the finance officer responsible for the National Capital Region, there remains only three finance soldiers to provide finance support to the patients and 3,900 members of the medical staff at Walter Reed.
In most cases, positions previously manned by soldiers were replaced with civilian positions in the grade of GS-5. A GS-5 Step 1 earns a base pay of $24,677. Employees in the Washington D.C. area receive a locality pay of 15.98% bringing the starting salary to $28,620. The finance officer in charge of the National Capital Region reported considerable problems finding employees willing to work in such a high-cost area for the given wages, further hindering his abilityh to provide timely and accurate military pay service to the patients at Walter Reed.
If this was something more pressing to the Pentagon and Bush Administration than the pay of our wounded combat vets, they would've contracted Haliburton to do the work for several hundred million. But it's just wounded soldiers, yesterday's trash, so civvies at GS-5 was good enough for them.
It's clear that they're going to have to pay more to hire the people to replace those soldiers, at a much higher cost to the Pentagon (and hence the taxpayers). All because the Army needs those pencil pushers in the front lines since they can't find enough grunts in recruiter offices.
It's deplorable that our wounded have to deal with these sorts of problems. It's telling that the Pentagon is still unprepared to deal with the war's after-effects, even years into the war. The Pentagon and Congress need to take stock of the report and respond appropriately.