Pentagon officials and congressional staffs are working together to try to ensure that thousands of bonus-qualified recruits, and thousands of careerists ready to re-enlist, aren’t harmed financially by a suspension of bonuses and incentive pay.
The extra money stopped Jan. 1 because President Bush vetoed the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill because of a provision that could expose assets of the fledgling Iraqi government to U.S. lawsuits from victims of Saddam Hussein’s regime.
Until the $696 billion defense policy bill is revised, passed and signed, or Congress clears separate legislation restoring bonus and pay authorities, the services must operate without key force management tools, including all enlistment, re-enlistment and retention bonuses being paid to fill critical skills.
Capitol Hill staffers and Defense officials have been brainstorming how to rewrite the delayed defense bill to be certain it fully protects recruits and service members from unintended consequences of the bonus limbo. They want to make sure, for example, that suspended payments are made retroactive to Jan. 1 for everyone, whether infantrymen and health care professionals or aviators and nuclear-trained officers.
Defense officials also are pressing Congress to protect tax breaks for service members who might be unable to re-enlist before returning this month from Iraq and Afghanistan. Special language could be necessary to allow war zone tax exemptions to apply to bonus contracts whose signing must be delayed until members return to home bases and bonus authority is restored.
With no authorization bill, the military’s pay raise appearing in mid-January checks will be 3 percent, not 3.5 percent as passed by Congress. Standing law allows only for raising pay to match wage growth in the private sector, which is the lower figure. Congress had called for a 3.5 percent hike to continue to close a perceived pay gap.
When revising the defense bill, lawmakers are expected to make the larger raise retroactive to Jan. 1. But for it to show up in end-of-month paychecks, the revised bill would have to be signed by Jan. 22.
For most members facing re-enlistment decisions, suspension of bonus authority isn’t a big deal. The services are offering service extensions of a month or two until bonuses are available again. The Army, which in wartime is paying bonuses to 82 percent of soldiers who re-enlist, intends to keep all bonus levels unchanged for several months so that no soldier delayed in signing a new contract will see the bonus lowered while he or she waits.
The services were alerted to the veto days after Christmas. For the Army, at least, that was enough time to advise soldiers with expiring contracts to re-enlist before Jan. 1 to ensure a guaranteed bonus. This led to a surge of 1,500 re-enlistments during the last days of December.
The effect of bonus suspensions on recruiting is a bigger worry, said Carr.
Army officials said recruits have not been discouraged from re-enlisting through the first week of January. Still, Carr worries that it could happen. He noted that January is the biggest month for recruiting outside of summer, with the Army alone hoping to ship in roughly 7,500 recruits. The Navy and the Air Force also will need to offer recruit bonuses on certain critical skills, and therefore are selectively attaching the addendum to some contracts.
The Marine Corps doesn’t need the addendum. Its contract, said Carr, already gives recruits some options if the bonus they are signing up for isn’t authorized. A recruit at that point can choose to stay in without a bonus, reduce the length of his or her contract or simply end his or her tour in the Corps.
If the other services begin to see a chilling effect on recruiting from the conditional bonus language being used, Carr said, the department is preparing a more reassuring contract addendum that, like the Marine contract, would offer recruits options if Congress fails to approve their bonuses.
To comment, e-mail milupdate@aol.com, write to Military Update, P.O. Box 231111, Centreville, VA, 20120-1111 or visit: www.militaryupdate.com.
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