A local congressman has released a statement on the Pentagon’s recent halt of over-payments mistakenly made to more than 10,000 soldiers.
13th District Congressman Rodney Davis was among several members of Congress who put public pressure on the department to stop this practice immediately.
Section 642 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed the House on May 18, will establish a statute of limitations on the military recovering future over-payments and scrutinizes the Defense Finance and Accounting Service’s management of exciting cases of service member debt.
Davis said, “The decision to do this in the first place was completely unacceptable. It’s a perfect example of bureaucracy acting without any regard to the real-world impact it may have. Some of these over-payments were made more than ten years ago but now soliders – many of whom served multiple combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan – are being forced to go into debt to fix the DOD’s mistake. I’m glad the DOD has halted this practice, but we need to fix this issue permanently by having the House passed NDAA signed into law.”
President Obama has threatened to veto this bill.
Davis plans to lead a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting an investigation about why these over-payments are occurring.