Lawmakers push Army to fix National Guard pay problems

The Army has not corrected National Guard pay problems that it claimed to have fixed, three House lawmakers charged in a letter sent to Pentagon officials on Friday.

A General Accounting Office investigation from October 2003 and testimony last month from senior Pentagon officials identified numerous pay problems within the National Guard. The Army claimed to have resolved the issues, but it appears that many of the problems persist, according to the letter, which was signed by House Government Reform Committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., and Rep. Ed Schrock, R-Va.

The lawmakers said that Acting Assistant Army Secretary Ernest Gregory should make the outstanding pay issues his "top priority." The Army and the National Guard did not respond to requests for comment on the letter.

"Can you please clear up the discrepancy between your statements and the findings of the GAO?" the letter stated. "Four months have gone by [since the GAO report] and some of these Guardsmen are still strapped with payroll errors. The committee respectfully requests that you correct these remaining problems immediately."

During a Government Reform Committee hearing last month, senior National Guard officials said extended deployments had derailed a pay system that was designed to compensate periodic service. In two years of deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, Guard members had been overpaid, underpaid and not paid.

In the letter, the lawmakers mentioned 34 members of a Colorado Special Forces reserve unit who were mistakenly assigned an average of $48,000 in debt. That debt was temporarily suspended and determined to be inaccurate, but the suspension expired Feb. 14 and the debt is now back in place, according to the letter.

The letter pressed for "a resolution of the mistaken debt assessment by means of a full waiver."

During the January hearing, Shays suggested that the Pentagon create a National Guard pay ombudsman office. The letter renewed that call and asked the Army to provide an update on that initiative.