The White House said Wednesday that President Obama wholeheartedly supports the Pentagon’s decision to suspend efforts to collect improperly awarded enlistment bonuses given to some members of the California National Guard.
“When a promise is made to our men and women in uniform, we should keep it,” presidential press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Wednesday.
“We welcome this move by the Department of Defense to follow this through … to make sure that the people of the National Guard know that the president has their back,” he added.
Earnest made the remarks after Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said he is suspending “all efforts to collect reimbursement” from the improperly awarded bonuses. News broke earlier this week that the Pentagon was seeking to recover the money 10 years after it was disbursed, leaving some 10,000 soldiers and service members — many of whom have served multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan — hard-pressed to make the repayments.
Carter ordered the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to suspend all efforts to collect reimbursement from affected California National Guard members, as soon as it “practical.” “We certainly want to avoid a situation where service members are punished because of nefarious or fraudulent behavior by someone else so we want to make sure the process is fair,” Earnest said.
He warned that the suspension of collection efforts could take “a few days to take effect given the complicated nature of the payroll” at the Defense Department.
The temporary suspension has some critics dissatisfied with the Obama administration’s response. Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., wants the Pentagon to stop forcing soldiers who collected improper bonuses to repay them altogether.
Concerned Veterans for America, a nonprofit that advocates for veterans, took issue with Carter’s pledge to suspend the collections until next July, when he hopes the Pentagon can resolve the decision-making process on which cases should be repaid and which should not.
CVA executive director Mark Lucas said the Carter announcement is “mildly encouraging” but his solution “misses the mark.”
“Adjusting the program with the hope of a resolution nine months from now is an insufficient solution,” Lucas said in a statement. “The answer to this problem is an immediate waive of these bonus repayments and legislation that will prevent Pentagon waste, fraud, and abuse from ever affecting American veterans again.”
