[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 37 (Tuesday, March 23, 2004)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E428]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       AN INSULT TO OUR SOLDIERS

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                            HON. MARK UDALL

                              of colorado

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 23, 2004

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. Speaker, earlier this month the New York 
Times published an opinion piece on payroll system problems in the 
military--specifically in our National Guard. The piece quoted a letter 
from a soldier in my district, SGT Daniel Romero, who was killed in an 
explosion in Kandahar, Afghanistan, nearly two years ago.
  In a letter to a fellow sergeant, Sergeant Romero wrote, ``Are they 
really fixing pay issues [or] are they putting them off until we 
return? If they are waiting, then what happens to those who (God 
forbid) don't make it back?''
  Sergeant Romero was referring to payment problems that he and his 
fellow soldiers had experienced. In a November 2003 report that studied 
the payroll processes of six Army National Guard units called up to 
active duty, GAO found--among other things--that some soldiers did not 
receive payments for up to six months after mobilization. Payment 
problems are not limited to the Guard, but as my colleague 
Representative Shays pointed out, the payroll process is antiquated, 
designed for a time when members of the Guard were not often called up 
to active duty.
  The following piece asks an important question: ``As we mobilize 
troops from around the country and send them off to fight and possibly 
die in that crucible of terror known as combat, is it too much to ask 
that they be paid in a timely way?''
  SGT Daniel Romero died for our country. He was a brave and dedicated 
soldier who proudly served when his nation called on him to fight in 
the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.
  It is the very least we can do to ensure we work as hard for soldiers 
like SGT Romero as they work for us. That's why I believe that fixing 
these payment problems should be an immediate priority for the 
Department of Defense.

                [From the New York Times, Mar. 15, 2004]

                       An Insult to Our Soldiers

                            (By Bob Herbert)

       Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, is chairman of the House 
     Committee on Government Reform. He tells a story about 
     Sergeant Daniel Romero of the Colorado Army National Guard, 
     who was sent to fight in Afghanistan.
       In a letter dated March 23, 2002, Sergeant Romero asked a 
     fellow sergeant: ``Are they really fixing pay issues [or] are 
     they putting them off until we return? If they are waiting, 
     then what happens to those who (God forbid) don't make it 
     back?''
       As Mr. Davis said at a hearing this past January, 
     ``Sergeant Romero was killed in action in Afghanistan in 
     April 2002.'' The congressman added, ``I would really like to 
     hear today that his family isn't wasting their time and 
     energy fixing errors in his pay.''
       As we mobilize troops from around the country and send them 
     off to fight and possibly die in that crucible of terror 
     known as combat, is it too much to ask that they be paid in a 
     timely way?
       Researchers from the General Accounting Office, a 
     nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, studied the 
     payroll processes of six Army National Guard units that were 
     called up to active duty. What they found wasn't pretty.
       There were significant pay problems in all six units. A 
     report released last November said, ``Some soldiers did not 
     receive payments for up to six months after mobilization and 
     others still had not received certain payments by the 
     conclusion of our audit work.''
       This is exactly the kind of thing that servicemen and 
     women, especially those dealing with the heightened anxiety 
     of life in a war zone, do not need. Maj. Kenneth Chavez of 
     the Colorado National Guard told a Congressional committee of 
     the problems faced by the unit he commanded:
       ``All 62 soldiers encountered pay problems. . . . During 
     extremely limited phone contact, soldiers called home only to 
     find families in chaos because of the inability to pay bills 
     due to erroneous military pay.''
       These problems are not limited to the National Guard. But 
     one of the reasons the Guard has been especially hard hit is 
     that, in the words of another congressman, Christopher Shays, 
     its payroll system is ``old and leaky and antiquated,'' 
     designed for an era when the members of the Guard were seen 
     as little more than weekend warriors.
       That system has been unable to cope with widespread call-
     ups to extended periods of active duty and deployment to 
     places in which personnel qualify for a variety of special 
     pay and allowances, particularly in combat zones.
       The G.A.O. report said, ``Four Virginia Special Forces 
     soldiers who were injured in Afghanistan and unable to resume 
     their civilian jobs experienced problems in receiving 
     entitled active duty pay and related health care.''
       The country is asking for extraordinary--in some cases, 
     supreme--sacrifices from the military, and then failing to 
     meet its own responsibility to provide such basic necessities 
     as pay and health care.
       ``The military knows that it's really blown it,'' said Mr. 
     Shays, who heads a subcommittee of the Government Reform 
     Committee. He noted that National Guard and military reserve 
     units were given enhanced roles in the aftermath of the cold 
     war. But the payroll systems (and some other basic functions) 
     were not upgraded accordingly.
       ``This is a huge problem,'' he said.
       And it is not likely to be solved soon.
       ``Anything that could be done in the short term is kind of 
     like Band-Aids, things that will hopefully result in fewer 
     errors but will not fix the problem,'' said Gregory Kutz, who 
     supervised the G.A.O. report.
       A lasting solution to the pay problems, he said, will 
     require a completely new system.
       Defense Department officials insist they are working 
     simultaneously on short-term fixes and the creation of a 
     brand new system. Patrick Shine, acting director of the 
     Defense Finance and Accounting Service, told me that a 49-
     step ``plan of action'' has been developed in response to the 
     G.A.O. report.
       He said he hoped that a completely new payroll system could 
     be unveiled in the spring of 2005.
       I asked how confident he was about the deadline. ``Well,'' 
     he said, ``I'll be very honest with you. I don't think we're 
     all that different from private companies, seeing sometimes 
     slippages in schedules.''
       But he was optimistic, he said.

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