U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

WASHINGTON : 

For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office

Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512–1800; DC area (202) 512–1800

Fax: (202) 512–2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402–0001

96–995 PDF 2005

ARE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS AT THE

DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE IMPACTING ARMY

RESERVE PAY

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY

AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 20, 2004

Serial No. 108–235

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY AND FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania, Chairman

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

MIKE HETTINGER, Staff Director

LARRY BRADY, Professional Staff Member

MARK STEPHENSON, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 20, 2004 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Gregory, Ernest J., Acting Assistant Secretary for the Army for Financial

Management and Comptroller, Department of the Army; Lieutenant

General James R. Helmly, Chief, Army Reserves, Department of the

Army; and Patrick T. Shine, Director, Military and Civilian Pay Services, Defense Finance and Accounting Service, Department of Defense .. 92

Kutz, Gregory D., Director of Financial Management and Assurance,

Government Accountability Office; Lieutenant Colonel Donald J. Campbell, USAR, (ret.), former Unit Commander, 3423rd Military Intelligence Unit, Connecticut; Major George W. Riggins, USA, (ret.),

Forscom Support Unit, Maryland; and Sergeant Melinda Sue DeLain,

USAR, 948th Forward Surgical Team, Michigan ....................................... 10

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 86

DeLain, Sergeant Melinda Sue, USAR, 948th Forward Surgical Team,

Michigan, prepared statement of ................................................................. 78

Gregory, Ernest J., Acting Assistant Secretary for the Army for Financial

Management and Comptroller, Department of the Army, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 94

Helmly, Lieutenant General James R., Chief, Army Reserves, Department of the Army, prepared statement of .................................................. 101

Kutz, Gregory D., Director of Financial Management and Assurance,

Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of ....................... 13

Platts, Hon. Todd Russell, a Representative in Congress from the State

of Pennsylvania, prepared statement of ...................................................... 3

Riggins, Major George W., USA, (ret.), Forscom Support Unit, Maryland,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 72

Shine, Patrick T., Director, Military and Civilian Pay Services, Defense

Finance and Accounting Service, Department of Defense, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 114

Towns, Hon. Edolphus, a Representative in Congress from the State

of New York, prepared statement of ........................................................... 6

(1)

ARE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS AT

THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE IMPACTING

ARMY RESERVE PAY

TUESDAY, JULY 20, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY AND

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 3 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Todd Russell Platts

(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Platts, Blackburn, and Towns.

Also present: Mr. Tom Davis of Virginia and Mr. Schrock.

Staff present: Mike Hettinger, staff director; Larry Brady and

Tabetha Mueller, professional staff members; Amy Laudeman, legislative assistant; Adam Bordes, minority professional staff member; and Jean Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. PLATTS. We are going to go ahead and get started. We have

a number of Members who are still en route over from the floor.

This hearing of the Subcommittee on Government Efficiency and

Financial Management will come to order. We appreciate everyone’s patience while we wrapped up floor votes. Our hope is that

the next series of votes won’t be, hopefully, for about 2 hours, and

we can get a good part of the hearing underway and completed before the next series of votes.

We appreciate everyone’s participation today on the continuing

oversight effort of this subcommittee regarding the financial management of the Department of Defense. And I cannot imagine a

more important issue in financial management than how we pay

our courageous men and women in uniform. I think that as we ask

our fellow citizens to go into harm’s way to protect the safety and

security of our Nation and the principles for which it stands, as

well as our very own personal safety as fellow Americans, that the

least we can do is adequately and appropriately compensate those

courageous individuals.

Unfortunately, as we learned late last year through a GAO study

regarding our Guard units that have been deployed and a more recent study regarding our reservists, we know that we have many

challenges to meet when it comes to adequately paying our soldiers.

I would tell you that I was quite dismayed when I learned of the

examples last year and further disappointed when I learned of the

2

regularity of inappropriate, wrongful levels of pay and compensation, and the impact on our soldiers and their families as well as

the impact on their missions and their retention rates. We certainly need to do better, and as we will hear from our second panel

I believe we are on the right track and the Defense Department is

taking these challenges very seriously.

I am going to submit most of my opening statement for the

record and, from a time-sensitive standpoint, move forward.

We will be hearing from our military and Defense Department

leaders on our second panel. We are delighted that we will have

Lieutenant General James Helmly, Chief of the Army Reserve; Mr.

Ernest Gregory, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management; and Mr. Patrick Shine, Director of Military and

Civilian Pay Services for the Defense Financing Accounting Services.

Before we hear from that panel, though, we are again delighted

to have Greg Kutz from the newly named Government Accountability Office. Greg is the author of both the 2003 report regarding the

Guard units as well as the most recent case studies regarding reservists. We appreciate your work and are delighted to have you

with us.

And, perhaps most importantly, we are delighted to have with us

three courageous Americans who have served our Nation in harm’s

way and have made a great effort to be here with us today to share

their personal experiences. We are delighted to have Lieutenant

Colonel Don Campbell come down from Massachusetts; Major

George Riggins from Maryland; and Sergeant Melinda DeLain. We

appreciate all three of you for your service. As one who is honored

and proud to serve our Nation in public office, I know that what

I do, and, as I conveyed to you, what I do in a civilian position

pales in comparison to what each of you have done in wearing our

Nation’s uniform and going into harm’s way for all of us. So I personally thank you for your service. I also know, Major Riggins, your

wife is currently deployed. Your son first was absent his dad as you

served overseas, and now his mom. That is a tremendous sacrifice

by him. And Sergeant DeLain, your service as well. I was looking

for—your 8-year-old daughter Katelyn. She’s out seeing the sights

of D.C., right? Well, we appreciate your service and your family’s

service. And, again, thank you for being here.

Before I yield to our ranking member, Mr. Towns, the gentleman

from New York, I would like to take the chairman’s privilege of

wishing an early happy birthday. Mr. Towns will be 29 for the

umpteenth time tomorrow, right? Happy Birthday. I now turn to

the gentleman from New York, Mr. Towns, for the purposes of an

opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Todd Russell Platts follows:]

3

4

5

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, thanking you

for recognizing my birthday, I do appreciate that. And I thank you

for holding this hearing on what is quickly becoming a crisis for

our Armed Services and reservists. And that is maintaining an

adequate financial system in order to honor our commitment to our

Nation’s troops.

Let me also thank our witnesses before us today, especially those

of you who have ably served our Nation with pride and distinction.

As you know, Mr. Chairman, the issue of adequate financial management at the Department of Defense is not foreign to our committee as we have collaborated on improving the internal control

structure and chronic accounting problems demonstrated by the

agency over the year. Today, however, we are dealing with the

pressing issue of maintaining a reliable and efficient payroll system

for our reservists, many of whom are now in immediate danger

while serving our Nation’s interests abroad.

Since 2001 our reservists have been asked to do more for us than

at any other time in recent memory. To date, there are more than

150,000 Reserve troops on Active Duty, with 130,000 of those

troops coming from the Army National Guard, and Army Reserves.

Recent statistics tell us that 40 percent of our troops currently

based in Afghanistan and Iraq are reservists, and DOD contends

that their contribution to our overseas operation may escalate to 50

percent in future deployments.

In my home State of New York alone, nearly 6,000 Army reservists have been mobilized among 171 separate units. According to

the analysis provided to us today by GAO, approximately 95 percent of the Reserve soldiers reviewed experience some type of payroll-related problem. Of these, nearly 300 soldiers received a total

of $50,000 in underpayments, in addition to DOD being delinquent

in paying 245 soldiers $77,000 for Active-Duty pay and allowances.

Furthermore, over 300 reservists who were deployed to designated

combat zones did not receive their entitled tax preferential treatment in a timely manner.

Simply stated, Mr. Chairman, this is unacceptable.

I am not here to debate the merits of our efforts overseas or our

Nation’s foreign policy. There will be time enough for us to do that

in other venues. I will, however, state that it is disingenuous for

us to tell the American people that our armed services are well prepared when we cannot even guarantee our soldiers that they will

receive their pay and benefits in a timely fashion. The spouses, the

children, and families of those deployed overseas, are often dependent on such resources until their loved ones return.

Hopefully, our efforts today will be productive in finding solutions to such problems. Mr. Chairman, we have heard too many

times coming from too many family members the saying: We cannot continue to live, because we do not have resources.

Let me thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me thank the witnesses for joining us today. And, on that note, I yield back.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Edolphus Towns follows:]

6

7

8

9

10

Mr. PLATTS. We will move to our first panel. As is the practice

of the committee, we will ask each of our witnesses to stand and

be sworn prior to beginning your testimony.

We will then recognize each of you for a general timeframe of 5

minutes, if you can try to summarize as best possible—but we are

not going to be a stickler if you need to go over some. And then

we will get into questions. So if you would raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you. The clerk will reflect that all witnesses

affirmed the oath.

We will begin to my left, Mr. Kutz, with your testimony and then

we will work our way across the panel.

STATEMENTS OF GREGORY D. KUTZ, DIRECTOR OF FINANCIAL

MANAGEMENT AND ASSURANCE, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY OFFICE; LIEUTENANT COLONEL DONALD J. CAMPBELL, USAR, (RET.), FORMER UNIT COMMANDER, 3423RD

MILITARY INTELLIGENCE UNIT, CONNECTICUT; MAJOR

GEORGE W. RIGGINS, USA, (RET.), FORSCOM SUPPORT UNIT,

MARYLAND; AND SERGEANT MELINDA SUE DeLAIN, USAR,

948TH FORWARD SURGICAL TEAM, MICHIGAN

Mr. KUTZ. Mr. Chairman and Representative Towns, thank you

for the opportunity to discuss Army Reserve pay problems. Army

Reserve soldiers serve a critical role in fighting the global war on

terrorism. The bottom line of my testimony today is that Army Reserve soldiers must fight another enemy, our Nation’s broken military pay system.

My testimony has two parts. first, examples of the problems that

we identified; and, second, the causes of those problems.

First, as shown on the poster board, 95 percent, or 332 of the soldiers that we investigated, had pay problems. Although these soldiers are counted once, many had numerous errors. These errors

included overpayments, underpayments, and late payments. Problems that we identified often lingered through the entire ActiveDuty tour and sometimes for a year or more after demobilization.

Examples of the pay problems include erroneous withholding and

late repayment of Federal taxes for all 303 soldiers deployed to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and Qatar; a 3-month delay receiving thousands of dollars of hardship duty pay for 49 soldiers from the North

Carolina Quartermaster unit; a sergeant from the Maryland Military Police, armed with pay support documentation, traveling every

2 weeks from Baghdad to Kuwait to deal with pay problems; and

a soldier from the Connecticut Intelligence Unit who was not paid

$3,000 for the entitled family separation allowance.

Our audit and investigations also identified a significant problem

with improper payments. For example, $47,000 was improperly

paid to 76 soldiers from the Texas Dental Unit for hardship duty

pay after the soldiers had already left the hardship duty location.

Soldiers that receive overpayments must contact DOD to repay the

money. Unfortunately, as Major Riggins will tell you, trying to

repay DOD can be a significant challenge.

Further, several soldiers received and oftentimes spent tens of

thousands of dollars of overpayments without reporting them. One

soldier acknowledged being overpaid, but stated she thought that

11

the payments were a gift from God. We referred all the potential

fraud cases to the Army Criminal Investigation Division for further

followup.

These cases are just a few of the potentially thousands of errors

that we identified for only 332 soldiers. Since September 11, 2001,

about 100,000 Army Reserve and 176,000 Army National Guard

soldiers have been mobilized and paid from this system. Given

these substantial numbers and current and future mobilizations,

the need to fix this problem is clear.

I am sure you are asking yourselves how, with today’s technology, we could be having so many problems paying our soldiers.

Which leads to my second point: the causes of these problems.

We found that the pay problems were caused by a combination of

breakdowns in people, processes, and systems. For example, the

complex processes make it difficult to maintain accountability over

soldiers as they moved from location to location. One soldier contacted us in March 2004 to try to find out why he was still being

paid Active-Duty pay. We found that this soldier, at least on paper,

had been transferred from a Maryland MP unit to a Pennsylvania

MP unit that was mobilized in February 2003; however, this soldier

was actually at home, not mobilized, and was improperly paid

$52,000 through May 2004.

Human capital issues also contributed to the problems we identified, including insufficient resources, inadequate training, and customer service problems. Customer service is particularly important,

given the error-prone system that exists today. Nonintegrated systems with limited processing capabilities also contribute to the

problems that we identified. Because of the system weaknesses,

significant manual effort is needed to process Army Reserve pay.

Let me give you an example of what I mean by the lack of integration. On May 1, 2003, a soldier with the Texas Dental Unit received a promotion from private first class to specialist. The lack

of integration means that the promotion is processed in the personnel system, but soldier pay records are not automatically updated.

Instead, a paper copy of the promotion must be forwarded to pay

personnel who manually update the pay system. This soldier did

not receive her pay raise for over 5 months because of delays in

processing the records.

Limited processing capabilities also caused errors in the combat

zone tax exclusion for all 303 soldiers that were deployed overseas.

This is an important benefit to soldiers who put themselves in

harm’s way for their country. However, the current systems do not

have the capability to stop withholding the taxes from eligible soldiers. Instead, the system first withholds the payments from the

soldiers that are in the combat zone and then later repays them.

This work-around leads to delays and errors and causes significant

confusion for the soldiers and their families.

In closing, I want to first acknowledge that DOD and the Army

have taken positive actions in response to our prior recommendations. We have had a very constructive dialog with the members of

the second panel and their representatives who are working

proactively to resolve issues. We believe that the actions taken to

date should improve customer service and reduce the vulnerability

of the system to error. However, short of a complete reengineering

12

of the people, processes, and automated systems, we believe that

Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers will continue to experience pay problems.

DOD has been attempting to reengineer its military pay system

for a decade or more. The current system was not designed to support the reality of today’s Army Reserve and National Guard missions. Our citizen soldiers and their families deserve nothing less

than a world-class military pay system. I look forward to continuing to work with DOD and the Congress to see that this happens.

Mr. Chairman, that ends my statement.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Kutz. And, again, thank you for

your in-depth studies both with the Guard and Reserve units. Your

work is certainly helping to bring to light the challenges and problems that need to be addressed, and to bring forward very positive

recommendations that, as you referenced, DOD is embracing and

moving forward with.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kutz follows:]

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

Mr. PLATTS. So next, Lieutenant Colonel Campbell.

Colonel CAMPBELL. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to present to you some

of the pay problems experienced by our unit during activation from

December 2002 to December 2003.

First, every unit member voluntarily signed a waiver to allow the

National Intelligence Center to activate our unit in a minimum

amount of time, due to a need for personnel at the Army Intelligence and Security Command, INSCOM, at Fort Belvoir. The unit

left literally within days of being notified, reported to Fort Meade

for in-processing, and then on to INJET for a week’s training before

leaving for Fort Belvoir. The 94th RSC processed our original orders and did the Soldier Readiness Program and in fact did an excellent job of getting everyone paid and into the system and paid

the very first pay period we were eligible. Pay entitlements such

as COLA, basic housing allowance, and separation pay were a constant source of concern after that, because there was always someone in the unit not being paid, overpaid, or underpaid.

The problem here is that the system requires money paid wrongly to be collected back, and then the correct amount is disbursed

to the individual, often taking weeks or months to complete one incorrect payment. The fact is that the system got the basic pay correct most of the time, and that relieved some of the stress of getting funds back home.

The DFAS accounting and finance system has some serious

issues with getting personnel pay. DFAS had new systems, new

personnel, and a host of other factors impacting personnel getting

paid. These reasons were given to us at different times as we

worked to solve the individual per-diem pay issues at INSCOM.

This situation was made worse by deployments. As they increased,

DFAS fell behind at paying travel vouchers.

The mandatory use of government-issued Visa cards for all payments for housing made a bad situation worse. And due to unit

personnel having to meet the 11th of each month by regulation, it

was almost impossible for DFAS to get the funds back to us in time

to make their credit cards, often resulting in people’s credit cards

being suspended. We asked that every unit member have their

credit card limit increased, and that was done after we made a

written request to do so.

Mr. Chairman, what I just described is the financial world we

lived in when dealing with credit card and pay issues. I had a situation, a situation with over 40 other reservists assigned to

INSCOM was made worse by the actions and behaviors of some individuals assigned to INSCOM. I take no pleasure in telling the

committee that our unit and many other reservists were victimized

throughout our deployment, and then for months afterwards, trying

to correct the wrongs done to us.

The problems started with our first travel voucher sent to DFAS.

Some were paid as submitted for the full per diem and some were

not. When the problems were brought to DFAS, Mr. Sands at

DFAS ruled that the 1–800-Go-Army S&A statements and

auditability were good, and they corrected the pay for everyone. We

figured that was the end of the problem. We were wrong. The situation continued because of an interpretation made of the PPG by

68

Captain Cleveland, the finance officer at INSCOM, who notified

DFAS that in fact we should not be paid per diem because the PPG

stated the maximum use of facilities was required, and those on

Operation Noble Eagle were required to use the dining facilities, so

per diem should be stopped.

The situation got to the point that General Fay, the Deputy Commander for INSCOM, formed what he called a per-diem committee

to review what could be met at the PPG and what could not. After

months of their review, it was determined that, in fact, we were in

fact entitled to the per diem, and the per-diem committee ended its

work and we moved on, thinking again that the process was finally

over and we were going to be paid and everything would be fine.

We moved on to demobilization in November. And while we were

at Fort Meade demobilizing, personnel started receiving e-mails

that in fact a collection effort had been initiated by DFAS to collect

money for the period that the per diem committee was operating.

The request was made via Captain Cleveland and Mr. Scarfo, GG–

15 at INSCOM, saying that General Fay intended that people use

the dining facilities during the per-diem committee’s work. I talked

to General Fay a number of times during this, and that was never

his intention. And when I called Mr. Scarfo from Fort Lee, he

claimed that Captain Cleveland of the financial initiated it, and

Captain Cleveland told me that Mr. Scarfo initiated it.

So we contacted General Fay, who knew nothing about the collection effort, and in fact said he would look into it. Subsequently, I

received an e-mail where he notified INSCOM and Mr. Scarfo to

cancel the collection, he never intended for that to happen. But

since he had moved on, was promoted, and was no longer at

INSCOM, his request was ignored. The problem was settled a number of months later when Colonel Harthcock, the then-deputy commander, got involved and he personally informed DFAS to stop all

collection efforts after he reviewed the situation and decided that

in fact we were entitled.

I must say at this point that all the operations officers at

INSCOM worked diligently to help us and they challenged the actions against us. But they have to operate within the system. And

when senior administrators and people in positions of responsibility

such as the finance officer contact DFAS and request that collection

actions happen, they happen.

In conclusion, I would just like to say that the ability of finance

officers and other civilian supervisors in senior positions to dictate

the DFAS collection efforts against individual reservists is an area

that needs to be reviewed by this committee.

Thank you for your time and patience and listening to my testimony today.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Colonel Campbell. We appreciate your

testimony and, again, your service to our Nation in uniform.

Major George Riggins.

Major RIGGINS. Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee,

thank you for inviting me to testify at this hearing today.

I enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1984, and gained a broad perspective of the military having served on Active Duty for 13 years as

an enlisted soldier, a Warrant Officer candidate, a West Point

cadet, and a commissioned officer. I subsequently served for 6

69

years as a member of the Individual Ready Reserve and as an individual mobilization augmentee. On August 29, 2003, at the rank of

major, I received an honorable discharge from the U.S. Army Reserve. Currently I reside, as noted by the Chairman, with my 8-

year-old son in Maryland while my wife is deployed in Iraq.

I was motivated to testify here today by a desire to provide one

officer’s perspective on how to improve the military pay system.

In January 2003, as America was gearing up for the brewing conflict in Iraq, I volunteered to be moved from the Individual Ready

Reserve into any needed capacity. Activated on March 6, 2003, I

mobilized at Fort McPherson, GA, and was subsequently assigned

as a ground liaison officer to the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing in

Doha, Qatar. I arrived in theater on March 25th, and returned to

the United States May 1st.

My pay issues began during my time in theater. I realized that

I was not receiving my hostile-fire pay, and that excessive taxes

were being withheld due to the pay system not recognizing my

combat zone and tax exclusion. Upon bringing this matter to the

attention of the Air Force pay office at my location, I was told that

since I was in the Army they could not help me. I then attempted

to contact the Defense Finance and Accounting Service [DFAS], via

e-mail and was informed I needed to contact the pay office at Fort

McPherson. Due to the time difference, my duty schedule, and communications restrictions during combat operations, I was unable to

contact anyone at Fort McPherson. Since I was receiving the bulk

of my pay, and my civilian employer was also generously making

up the difference between my military pay and my civilian salary,

my family was not in jeopardy of falling delinquent of any of their

bills. Because of this, I chose to focus on my mission at hand and

resolve the pay issues when I returned to the States.

When I returned to Fort McPherson in May, I detailed the difficulty I had to the pay office, and was informed that the problem

would be corrected and I would receive the moneys owed to me.

I completed my demobilization on May 15th and returned home.

The following month, I recognized that I was still being paid and

immediately contacted DFAS. They directed me back to the demobilization station at Fort McPherson. The official at Fort McPherson informed me that in an effort to ensure that my underpayment

had been corrected, they had left me in the pay system. Unfortunately, once the problem had cleared, they failed to remove me

from that pay system. They informed me that this mistake resulted

in my receiving $6,150.75 in overpayment, and provided me with

the address to return the money. I subsequently submitted a check

on July 25th, returning the full amount that I had been informed

to return.

Subsequent to this, I continued to receive leave and earning

statements indicating that I still owed an additional $1,140.54.

This led to a series of phone calls spanning 10 months, where I was

passed off from one organization to another. The Fort McPherson

office told me to contact DFAS in Cleveland. DFAS Cleveland initially told me to contact the debt collections office. They informed

me that I wasn’t in their system and that I did not need to worry

about this issue. Upon receiving additional statements of obligation, I began to become concerned for my personal credit rating,

70

and phoned DFAS Cleveland again. This time I was told that only

DFAS in Indianapolis could help me, but that I wasn’t allowed to

have their phone number and I needed to call back to my demobilization office at Fort McPherson.

Repeated calls to both the individual handling my file and to her

supervisor went unresolved. In March 2004, I came across a small

article in the Army Times requesting that reservists with pay difficulties contact the Government Accountability Office [GAO], as

they were performing a study. At that point, it had been 1 year

since I had mobilized, and it had been 7 full months since I had

been discharged from the Army entirely. I provided the GAO with

all the information pertaining to my case in hopes that their investigation would accelerate the resolution of my own personal case.

In April I again contacted the Fort McPherson pay office, and

this time I informed them that the GAO had expressed interest in

my situation. I was passed to a soldier who informed me that at

this point he couldn’t review my records because they had been

purged from the system. So on Thursday, April 15th, I provided

him with a faxed copy of all my leave and earning statements from

the past year, and he was able to reconstruct my pay history. The

sergeant quickly identified the problem and communicated it back

to me the following Tuesday. This entire situation stemmed from

the fact that the original calculation for what I owed did not take

into account income taxes. I was required to reimburse the government an additional $1,140 for money that was withheld from the

money that I had initially received in overpayment. In essence, I

was being asked to pay back money that I had never received. The

sergeant informed me that once the check was received, a recalculation would be performed and I would be reimbursed for anything due back to me. I sent the full amount to DFAS, and the

check cleared on May 13, 2004. As of today, 2 months later, I have

not yet received any indication reflecting the final recalculation.

The entire event originating primarily from human error

spanned over a year and consumed countless hours by myself, the

various individuals at Fort McPherson, DFAS, GAO, and now Congress. It is a case that illuminates inadequacies that require addressing in order to adequately provide pay and benefits to the

thousands of soldiers, sailors, and airmen deployed in the service

of our Nation.

I respectfully submit the following recommendations for your

consideration: First, local finance offices, regardless of branch of

service, need to be able to address a deployed service member’s

needs. In this day and age, we are moving more toward joint operations than ever before in our military’s history. A service member

should not have to contact a pay office on the other side of the

Earth in order to resolve a problem when a pay office from another

branch of the service is located 100 yards away. The key to resolving this is through automation and standardization. Web-based secure interfaces into a joint pay system would allow authorized pay

officials to make necessary changes from any location. By standardizing the system across all service branches, training requirements

are minimized.

Second, create a second-tier organization able to handle unique

and complicated pay problems. In the current system, regardless of

71

what organization that I spoke with, I was sent back to the same

spot where the problem had originated. While human error is excusable, as leaders we need to develop methods and procedures for

organizations to overcome these errors. The creation of an organization within DFAS that our individual service members can turn

to in order to escalate persistent problems will provide the means

necessary to rectify problems caused by human error. This is especially important to individual augmentees who do not have a divisional relationship with any one pay office.

Finally, expand the training of the existing work force to minimize the occurrence of those human errors. We are currently facing

a time where the active components are relying heavily on augmentation from the Reserve and National Guard in order to meet

the ever-increasing demands for forces deployed. It is imperative

that the individuals charged with the handling of these pay and

benefits be well versed in what is required to effectively care for

the units and individual augmentees. An effective training plan addressing these needs would resolve many of these issues.

While this experience has been personally frustrating, I count

myself as extremely lucky. My family and I were never at risk of

meeting any of our obligations due to these problems. However, it

is easy to see that issues such as these could be financially devastating to the young soldiers whose sole income supporting the

family is derived from their military paycheck. These soldiers are

already deployed in the far reaches of the world, facing life-anddeath decisions on a daily basis. They should not also be burdened

with wondering if their spouse at home will be able to make a car

payment or feed their child.

Mr. Chairman, subject to your questions, this concludes my testimony.

[The prepared statement of Major Riggins follows:]

72

73

74

75

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Major Riggins. I appreciate your insights. And I would hope that there are various individuals in this

room who have heard your testimony that now, a year after being

demobilized, there are still unresolved issues. I would hope that we

will see a quick resolution and you can once and for all know what

you are still owed. You have been very timely in your repayments,

and we as a government need to be very timely in reconciling your

account and getting you the right amount of money. We will be following up with you in the coming weeks to make sure that has

happened.

Major RIGGINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Next, Sergeant Melinda DeLain.

Sergeant DELAIN. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify at this hearing today. It

is a distinct honor to be here to discuss Army Reserve pay issues.

My name is Melinda Sue DeLain, and I am a sergeant in the

U.S. Army Reserve with the 948th Forward Surgical Team located

in Southfield, MI. I am a licensed practical nurse, combat medic,

and emergency medical technician for the Army. My unit was deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom from January

20, 2003 through August 29, 2003. During this deployment, my

unit had numerous pay issues. Some examples are: one, inaccurate

base pay; two, no basic allowance for housing; three, no family separation allowance; four, no hazardous-duty pay; Five, no special

medical or professional pay; Six, no tax-exempt pay; Seven, no bonuses for those that were eligible.

Basic allowance for housing and family separation allowance

should have begun on January 20 with the mobilization of our unit

from Southfield, MI to Fort McCoy, WI. This was not the case for

all the soldiers who were eligible. And at least five soldiers had

trouble receiving basic Active-Duty pay, professional pay, and/or allowances.

During our actual deployment to Kandahar Army Air Field in Afghanistan, all 20 personnel of the 948th FST experienced pay problems associated with basic Active-Duty pay, professional pay, allowances, combat tax exclusion, and/or in-theater incentive pay associated with deployment.

During the demobilization phase, at least 18 of the 20 soldiers

assigned to the 948th FST had pay problems associated with basic

Active-Duty pay, professional pay, or allowances. Once home and

released from activity duty, three soldiers were still receiving Active-Duty pay, at least 16 soldiers were still receiving hazardousduty pay.

The 948th’s biggest issues began February 28, 2003, when our

boots hit ground in Bazum, Afghanistan. Our unit in-processed

with an S–1 noncommissioned officer assigned to our higher command. Our unit was directed that our financial paperwork would

follow us to Kandahar, Afghanistan, our final destination. I spent

at least 4 hours trying to track down our paperwork to only learn

it had disappeared. We had to then turn around and re-inprocess

in Kandahar.

With the arrival of our first leave and earnings statement, our

unit learned how much we were not receiving what we were entitled to. As I was the acting S–1 NCO for my unit, a job that fell

76

to me due to the fact that I had prior Active-Duty experience, I

went to the personnel section for the 82nd Airborne, our ground

support. Once there, I learned that they did not handle any reserve

pay or issues dealing with pay, and that all questions had to be addressed in Uzbekistan. Everything had to be scanned and e-mailed

there, and from there reservists would deal with the issues. This

seemed to be a long process, and by this time it was the middle

of March, and most soldiers were without pay other than base pay.

It was also at this time that we learned that our pay would be divided into four separate checks. This just was not conducive to paying bills at home or Stateside.

As time progressed into April, still without all the incentives for

being in a combat zone, fellow soldiers began receiving e-mails

from home regarding the inability to pay creditors. During this

time, I was continuously at the 82nd Airborne PAC Office trying

to get help in regards to pay. They copied our entire LES from January through April to allow me to figure out what each soldier was

missing. I even called home two or three times to our home unit,

the 323rd Combat Support Hospital hub in Southfield, MI, looking

for direction and help, to only be told it had to be done in Afghanistan. As time passed without full pay, the morale of the unit fell

and the stress levels increased. Stress already ran high in the

948th FST due to the nature of our combat mission, so this added

stress was not conducive to the environment. Many of our soldiers

started seeking treatment with mental health.

Always taking care of the soldiers in my unit first, and in privacy, I could then worry about my own pay. Stressed about the

lack of pay, since I am a single parent, I worried about the pay

issues affecting my daughter, who was living with my parents. I

had a new house to pay for that I had signed on January 18, 2003.

I also had a relatively expensive vehicle at home to pay for. You

need to know that I am a registered nurse in Michigan, and thus

my expenses were relative to my job at home, not to being an E–

4 in the military. Around the end of March, my mother, who was

handling my bills, e-mailed me and asked me about the status of

pay. My commander at this time e-mailed her a memorandum for

record to send to my creditors requesting that they work with my

mother on payment issues—payment plans, until our payment

issues were fixed. Unknown to me, my mother and father were

paying my bills so that I would not lose my house or car or become

indebted to creditors. As this was not the first time pay issues had

been a problem with the military, my parents were prepared. To

this day, I do not know what I owe my parents, but I am sure I

still owe them money.

It was not till the middle of April 2003 that we started to receive

our correct pay, still in four separate checks.

Trying to keep track of all the soldiers’ back pay that was due

was done on an Excel spreadsheet. I spent numerous hours with

each soldier to make sure that they were receiving the right

amount due them. To be honest, I am not sure that each and every

soldier actually received the correct pay.

The problems continued once we got home. It took months to get

our final payment, which was our travel voucher. I know that I did

not receive my payment until the end of November, and some solVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:38 Feb 28, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00080 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96995.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
77

diers still did not have it at February’s drill. At this point, I turned

all pay issues over to the 323rd Combat Support Hospital in Southfield, MI. I do know that debts the Army says we owe them are

still being taken out of our drill pay. Just last Friday, I received

a call from a captain that has since transferred to the Inactive

Ready Reserve. They had a debt collector calling her saying she

owed over $500 due to them for overpayment.

After the 948th deployment, there are only four soldiers left in

our unit who actually deployed with us. Two transferred to the Inactive Ready Reserve, three left the unit, one moved, two discharged, one went to the National Guard, and the rest went back

to original units as they were involuntarily transferred for this deployment.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you for

the opportunity to provide testimony, and would be happy to respond to any questions.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Sergeant DeLain, for your testimony,

and again for your service and your family’s sacrifice on behalf of

our Nation as well.

[The prepared statement of Sergeant DeLain follows:]

78

79

80

81

Mr. PLATTS. Before we move to questions, I would like to recognize we have been joined by our Vice Chair, the gentlelady from

Tennessee, Mrs. Blackburn. Marsha, thanks for being with us.

I would like to start first, Mr. Kutz, with you. The studies you

have done certainly paint a pretty bleak picture in regard to the

reservists, 95 percent having at least one or more problems regarding their pay. We are going to get into some of the specifics of the

types of problems. But did your study identify, if we took the 5 percent who didn’t have any problems, what made them different that

they got paid as they should have been? Is there something that

jumps out? Any circumstances that jump out and say this is what

we need to be shooting for with all 100 percent?

Mr. KUTZ. There were some differences in the units. Some had

many more problems than others. The two largest units from

Maryland and Texas had the most problems. There were some correlations with units that had a unit administrator, that was well

trained, who was handling some of the pay problems, that may

have helped reduce issues. Certainly all of them had some sort of

problems from the units—there were no units that had no problems. So the 5 percent were spread across all eight of our case

study units. But I don’t think there was any in particular that I

would say was that different for the 5 percent.

Mr. PLATTS. They were just a lucky few that got treated as they

should have been?

Mr. KUTZ. Yeah. Probably lucky. Because they had the same

types of special pays and various pay options that the other ones

had.

Mr. PLATTS. Your comment and your statements about technology. In today’s world, technology is one area that I look at and

stand amazed; we have companies that can track where every

product in their inventory is around the world and how many are

en route and where they are, yet we can’t do right by our men and

women in uniform. We certainly know we need to do a lot better.

For our military personnel, I would be interested in what, if any,

briefing you were given. As part of your mobilization, I know you

go through a whole regimen of activities on the financial side,

about having your financial papers in order and things. But specifically regarding your pay, what kind of information were you given

up front to give you the ability to know what to expect?

We can start, Colonel, with you and go across.

Colonel CAMPBELL. Yes, sir. The information we received was

very general in nature. It was never specific as to how much anybody would receive for anything. You knew what your base pay

was. I mean, that is published all the time. But beyond that, any

special pay would be based on where you lived, what your rank

was, various other things.

So to answer your question, no, most people did not have any

idea what they were going to receive once on Active-Duty, beyond

basic pay.

Mr. PLATTS. Major.

Major RIGGINS. In my own personal case, the information that

we received, or that I received was sketchy. But to be fair, that was

based on the requirement for me to mobilize and move on from the

station that I was at within about a day and a half. So the sum

82

total of the experience was walking into the pay office, signing up,

and saying this is what I need to do in order to—or, these are the

pays that I need to receive, and then walking out of the office and

just assuming it was going to be cared for.

Mr. PLATTS. Sergeant.

Sergeant DELAIN. Actually, sir, that was probably the best part

of our SRP in Minnesota, before we even went to Fort McCoy, WI

to deploy. We sat down with each member of finance, we had all

our personnel paperwork with us, they broke down our packets.

They had pamphlets, a big table full of pamphlets of information.

And they went through with each individual soldier and broke

down exactly what you would be getting. This is where you are

going to be deployed to, so you are entitled to this, this, this, and

this. They circled everything, labeled it all down. It was—the only

thing they did not tell us was that we would remain under the Reserve pay system, and it would be broken into four individual

checks. That’s the only part we did not know about.

Mr. KUTZ. Mr. Chairman, I would say, looking at the Guard and

Reserves, we did find from a unit perspective, the ones that had

the more detailed soldier readiness reviews did have fewer problems at the beginning. So I think what she had said there is probably accurate. And that would help the problem at the beginning.

Mr. PLATTS. We do have votes going on now. The good news is

these are going to be the last recorded votes of the day. The bad

news is it means we are going to have to break here shortly, unless

Mrs. Blackburn could preside. I apologize again and I appreciate

your patience with us.

I know we have displayed a sample of a leave and earnings statement. Even with the briefings and the more detail, what would be,

from each of your perspectives, the likelihood of any soldier who

has even been given a good briefing to really be able to look at this

and in a quick, easy fashion say, yes, I was paid what I was supposed to? Because typically in a person’s paycheck you get a pay

stub, you know; if you are an hourly employee, how many hours

you worked; what your rate is; boom, boom, what is subtracted. Obviously, this a lot more complex with the dozens of different categories and things.

How certain would any of you be in saying, ‘‘I know for certain

I was paid accurately this month versus last month?’’

Colonel CAMPBELL. Sir, my unit, probably 2 people would be able

to do that out of the 11. It is something that was just too confusing

for most people to spend time on. If their basic pay was there and

the majority of their pay was there, the rest was just——

Mr. PLATTS. Just kind of take what you are given and assume

it is right?

Colonel CAMPBELL. Yeah. Correct.

Major RIGGINS. While the leave and earning statement is somewhat confusing, I think a bigger piece of it was just knowing exactly what it was that you were supposed to be entitled to for the—

and not having been associated with a unit, not having been completely up to speed, to be honest, with all of the changes that occurred in the 4 or 5 years that I had departed Active-Duty, it was

quite an eye opener to see that it was a new leave and earning

statement. And we—the folks that were in the same category that

83

were with me, we spent quite a bit of time debating what we were

entitled to and what we weren’t entitled to, and all decided that,

well, if one person was getting it, then we should probably all be

getting it, and went back and adjudicated the issue that way with

the finance office.

Mr. PLATTS. A challenging approach, though.

Major RIGGINS. Challenging at best, yes.

Mr. PLATTS. Sergeant DeLain.

Sergeant DELAIN. I actually find LES to be pretty simple to read;

but it was after years of Active-Duty is the reason. Usually it is

usually only the unit administrator or the UA that can break it

down. There are some special codes on there that you need to know

when they start breaking it individually into groups.

When we first got to Afghanistan, I went to the 82nd PAC Office

to find out exactly what codes were being used on the LES so that

we could break down, because my unit is a combination of doctors

and nurse anesthetists and officers and enlisted, and so there was

a big difference in the pay. But without having somebody that is

knowledgeable in all the codes and each individual area of that, it

would be difficult.

Mr. PLATTS. It is, I guess, two steps. One is making sure that

any pays or allowances that apply to you are accurately reflected,

what you are supposed to be getting, and then are they actually

there and being accounted for.

Actually I am going to yield to our ranking member, Mr. Towns,

and I will check how much time we have left on this vote. Actually,

I think what we are going to do, because we have just 2 minutes

left in the vote and we have just two votes, is we are going to recess, go over, get the two votes in and come back, and then we will

be able to continue uninterrupted. So, I appreciate your patience.

We stand in recess.

[Recess.]

Mrs. BLACKBURN. We will call the committee back to order. I do

know that Chairman Davis is going to be coming our direction and

he will have some questions.

Let’s see. Mr. Kutz, I think I would like to come to you first with

a question if I might, please, sir. We hear from DOD that they

have taken actions on several of the recommendations that you all

have presented and that they have gone beyond what GAO recommended. And what I would like to know is if you can elaborate

on that and spell out for us some of the actions that DOD has

taken to address the pay problems.

Mr. KUTZ. Yes, with respect to the Army National Guard study

we did last fall, they went back and for the units that we looked

at, they looked at the particular problems we had there. They also

implemented many of the recommendations we had, particularly

the short-term ones, such as human capital and process issues. We

had five issues that remained from that report and we reiterated

those recommendations relating to human capital and to some

short-term programming, things they could do on the IT side.

With respect to the Army Reserve units, the eight units as part

of this study, my understanding is that for the underpayments for

all of the soldiers, that those have been paid. And again, we

haven’t validated that representation. And then for the overpayVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:38 Feb 28, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00087 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96995.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
84

ments, they established debts where relevant and are initiating collection process. Again, I would say that the representation had

gone beyond what we have had. I believe that is probably true.

They’re proactive. They brief us quarterly or even more often on

the status of what they are doing, and so I believe they are doing

the best they can to, you know, make the best of a bad situation.

It is a system that is not designed to take care of today’s Army

Reserve and National Guard soldiers that are mobilized for 1- or

2-year periods. It was a system that was designed for weekend

training and other short-term situations. So it’s not designed to

handle this nor the volume we have today.

Short of a complete reengineering of that, which I said in my

opening statement, we don’t believe that they can complete this.

Soldiers will still have pay problems in the Army Reserve and

Guard, but we believe they have reduced the vulnerability and

have improved customer service, so they should be better than they

were when we started this.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Have you gone in and done any kind of statistical analysis by unit as to where the bulk of the pay problems

exist and made any specific suggestions or has there been any specific cap applied to those?

Mr. KUTZ. With respect to the particular problems we found for

the Reserves, there were two in particular that we have talked to

them about it that they are going to try to deal with these, the

combat zone tax exclusion, which some of the other individuals

here at the table talked about. Everyone who was deployed was impacted by the systems problems that the Department has with

that. So if they can make short-term systematic fixes to that, that

would be a positive for tens of thousands of soldiers.

So that’s one thing that impacted everybody. We had 303 of our

soldiers that were deployed overseas. This impacted all of them,

not only from the standpoint that they didn’t get paid at the front

end, but many of them kept getting the benefit once they left country and they were no longer entitled to it. So it happened on both

ends of this.

The other special pay that was particularly error-prone was the

hardship duty pay and they are taking some actions with respect

to automating that. In the past, it’s been what we call a manual

workaround, where every month in theater someone has to input

information into the system for a soldier to get paid. What they

have done is automate that so that it automatically gets paid. It

doesn’t fix all the problems, but it does make it better.

So I would say the combat zone tax exclusion and the hardship

duty pay are the most frequent errors we have found as part of this

study.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, sir. I will yield to our committee

chairman for his statement and questions.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mrs. Blackburn. Our

committee has been working closely with GAO and the Department

to ensure that short and long-term steps result in correct and timely pay for Army Guard and Reserve. In 2003, of course, the GAO

issued a disturbing report on pay problems experienced by the National Guard personnel mobilized under Title X, and then at that

point we engaged GAO to look at the Army Reserve.

85

I want to acknowledge the hard work that GAO has done on this

investigation. And as we have heard, there continues to be a large

number of soldiers affected by improper payment and payroll errors. And this committee wants to help see the reservists and the

units participating in this study have their problems fixed as soon

as possible.

GAO visited the 629th Transportation Detachment stationed at

Fort Eustis, VA and found that all 24 deployed soldiers experienced

at least one pay problem. This is an intolerable situation and it is

the equivalent of financial friendly fire. The challenges of integrating pay systems and processes is not singular to the Department

of Defense or the Department of the Army, nor is it a problem that

has cropped up overnight.

Certainly the integration of payroll systems in such massive departments is long and difficult, but I think there’s a lot that can

be done to mitigate the problems were it certain that all the Department’s witnesses today are as committed to fixing the system

as they have been to fixing the National Guard payroll problems

that we addressed in the full committee in January.

At this time the combined efforts of the Army, the Reserve components, DFAS are moving, the pay administration for mobilized

soldiers is moving in the right direction. And many of your initiatives are based not on the infusion of major additional resources,

but rather the quality of the training, the guidance and system

support infrastructure for existing human resources.

Improvements have been made in training, procedural guidance,

systems controls in support of the mobilized soldiers’ pay. In many

cases, the success of these improvements won’t be visible with the

original mobilizations and deployments in support of Operation

Iraqi Freedom. They should result in improved pay support for

those soldiers currently deployed under OIF 2 and to an even

greater extent soldiers who are just beginning to be mobilized

under OIF 3. DFAS will deploy the forward compatible payroll system in the Army Reserves and National Guard.

DOD has been forthright in working with this committee and

with GAO to support the soldiers and families. Fully and effectively

addressing Army Reserve soldiers’ pay problems will require priority attention and sustained and concerted coordinated efforts by

DFAS, the Army, the Reserves to build on actions taken and

planned. The Army, the Army National Guard, Army Reserve and

DFAS have remained proactive in resolving the soldier pay challenges on the micro and the macrolevels and have remained engaged with this committee, and I want to thank them for their continued efforts in supporting the soldiers and family.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Tom Davis follows:]

86

87

88

89

Mr. TOM DAVIS. And I have a couple of questions here, Mr. Kutz.

You have described the multiple processes that need improvement.

Where is the most emphasis needed and can we expect any real improvement without reengineering the process for paying mobilized

reservists?

Mr. KUTZ. As I mentioned a moment ago, I think with respect

to short-term things that can happen the tracking of soldiers is the

one that caused the most problems. To the extent they can make

short-term actions to track soldiers from mobilization to deployment to demobilization, that triggers a lot of the various pays.

There was also one other thing that affected the 303 deployed soldiers. That was the combat zone tax exclusion, and there is a programming change that they need to make to either the current system or, as you mentioned, the forward compatible pay that hopefully will allow the system not to withhold taxes. What the system

does, it will not let you not withhold the taxes. It has to withhold

taxes and pay them back later. Those are some of the things they

could do in the short-term that could help a lot of the soldiers.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. Let me ask everybody this. Is it fair to expect

a soldier who is being deployed, called from their jobs and families

and being deployed in a far away country, to have the full responsibility for ensuring that he or she is receiving proper compensation or does DOD bear that responsibility or is it shared? Whose

responsibility is to make sure the payment is right?

Let me start with you.

Mr. KUTZ. I would say with the system as broken as it is now,

at the end of the day there is a lot of responsibility on the soldier,

which is not what we want. We want DOD to be responsible and

have the soldiers focus on their mission. I would say a disproportionate share of the responsibility now falls upon the shoulders of

the soldiers, and that’s what we’re trying to change and that’s what

DOD is trying to change. So hopefully as they make some of the

improvements that you outlined, less and less of the responsibility

will be on the soldier and they can stay focused on their mission.

Colonel CAMPBELL. The more you take the pressure off from worrying about pay, the better they can do their job.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. Major Riggins.

Major RIGGINS. The responsibility ultimately resides with the organization to be able to take care of those soldiers, sailors and airmen’s pay in a responsible manner. It is still incumbent on the individual to check and make sure that a human error was not made

and if one is made that they identify that back. But then it’s also

incumbent on the system to be able to resolve any problems that

come up in a rapid fashion.

Sergeant DELAIN. I believe, sir, that somebody has to be responsible for it, but I think there should be somebody with every unit,

that is their ultimate responsibility. We have people out there

doing every job you can imagine. Why not somebody with every

unit that is all they handle is personnel issues. We went with nobody to Afghanistan. We didn’t have anybody in Afghanistan to

help us at all.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. And Mr. Kutz, to take people away from their

families, away from their jobs and put them out there and then

many of them—that is a pay reduction right there, because not

90

every job pays their people. And then to send them over there and

have them paid improperly, it has been a lot of hardship on people;

families to support back home. And I wonder how we got in this

situation. We have been mobilizing for months. This is not the first

time in history that this has happened, that we were going to have

problems as you transfer from reserve to an active status. We

should have seen this coming.

Mr. KUTZ. I would agree. I think they have been trying to modernize their pay systems. We reported in 1993 and we recommended in a study we did that they should develop the integrated personnel pay system and they have been attempting to do

so for a decade. And I think they are trying to do that, but it is

proven to be somewhat resistant to reform at this point. And to the

extent that they can put in an integrated personnel pay system,

that is the long-term solution.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. Sergeant, let me ask you, just elaborate for me

on the effects the pay problems have on morale and on retention.

Sergeant DELAIN. Well, sir, as I said, there is only 4 of us out

of 20 left in my unit. We are nondeployable at this point. And from

the unit myself, there are very few forward surgical teams out

there. They are really used quite a bit in a war zone or combat

zone. So I think retention is probably at its lowest. I don’t know

the numbers, so I can’t actually say. But I know for the personnel

in our area, nobody is staying. Everybody is trying to get out, and

unfortunately at this point nobody can get out.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. It’s hard enough being called away and not

knowing how long you are going to be there, but not getting paid—

do you agree with that, Major?

Major RIGGINS. In my case the pay difficulty, as I stated in my

testimony, was not a personal hardship on me, other than the time

and frustration it took to get it resolved. However, I can easily see

that soldiers who rely on this to—for their family, to feed their children, make their house payments, that these issues can be devastating.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. Colonel.

Colonel CAMPBELL. In my case, it is a little different. It creates

morale problems and you have to deal with those. My unit is a

pretty specialized unit and everybody has retained and people have

reenlisted, so we have not lost anybody.

Mr. TOM DAVIS. Thank you all very much and hopefully we can

move to get these issues straightened out.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I just have a couple more questions before we

finish up. Major Riggins, you are part of the Individual Ready Reserve.

Major RIGGINS. I was.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. And how did this situation impact your pay

status being part of the Individual Ready Reserves?

Major RIGGINS. I am not sure I understand the question.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Did you find it more difficult as you were activated to resolve your pay issues? Do you think it was more difficult

for you to get this resolved than it was for someone who is a part

of the Army Reserve or someone who is on active duty?

Major RIGGINS. Absolutely. Being an individual ready reservist

and being called in to essentially fill a hole in an organization that

91

exists, I didn’t have habitual relationship with any one pay office.

I didn’t have the means or the resources or the connections to be

able to turn to folks that I had been working with over the years

to have these things resolved. So it was more difficult than I would

think a normal unit that had been living and working together and

had a pay office that they were habitually associated with to help

in caring for them. I think it is particularly important at this time

that the Individual Ready Reserve issues be resolved as we’re looking at deploying quite a few ready reservists here in the future.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I asked the question, because I had—Fort

Campbell is in my district and I had a great conversation with the

gentleman that handles pay and all such for one of the units there

and the institutional knowledge seemed to be what helped resolve

so many of the situations that they felt like they faced. And for

someone who is in the Individual Ready Reserve, I think not having that attachment would probably make that a bit more difficult.

So were the resources that you needed, were they readily available

or did you have to do all of this legwork yourself?

Major RIGGINS. Actually, probably four of the happiest years of

my life were spent at Fort Campbell serving with the 101st Airborne. And I understand what you are saying that while there in

an active duty component with a rapid deployment unit, you have

the resources and people to talk to, the pay offices, the infrastructure is there to support those soldiers. As an individual ready reservist, I was on my own to find out who I needed to send forms

to, who it was that was going to care for my pay issues, because

it was not readily apparent.

I was assigned to FORSCOM in Georgia but attached to the Air

Force. The Air Force could not handle my pay issues. The Army

wasn’t sure they could handle my pay issues. So it became an issue

of tracking down the right individuals.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. As we look at moving forward and more deployments and activations with the Individual Ready Reserves, do

you feel like DOD is on track to be able to handle the pay problems

that would come from the Individual Ready Reserves?

Major RIGGINS. I think that remains to be seen at this point. I

personally don’t have enough knowledge about what the internal

changes are being made to ramp up for the recent public announcements that large numbers of individual ready reservists are going

to be deployed. So I don’t have enough personal knowledge to be

able to honestly give you an honest answer.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Kutz, one more thing, your case study had

348 soldiers that were involved in that and you had hundreds of

errors, underpayments, overpayments, late payments, a little bit of

everything in that case study. Had DOD detected any of those errors or did they go undetected until you all found where the problems were?

Mr. KUTZ. For the most part, they were undetected.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Can you give me a percentage?

Mr. KUTZ. 90 percent were undetected.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I want to thank each of you, Mr. Kutz, Lieutenant Colonel Campbell, Major Riggins and Sergeant DeLain. I

want to thank you for your testimony. You have raised some great

issues that are important to the work that the committee does, but

92

most importantly I think you have done a great service for other

reservists and for the Army. And your testimony really is a critical

part of what we are doing as we look to work with the GAO, the

committee, the Department of Defense to be certain that what we

do is of service to the men and women who are in uniform and we

appreciate your service very much.

At this time, I would like to call the second panel. I would like

to request that each witness and anyone who might be advising

you during your testimony please stand and raise your right hand

and take the oath together.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mrs. BLACKBURN. We are honored to have Lieutenant General

James Helmly, Chief of the Army Reserve; Mr. Ernest Gregory,

Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army for Financial Management;

and Mr. Patrick Shine, Director of the Military and Civilian Pay

Services for the Defense Finance and Accounting Service. And Mr.

Gregory, we will start with you with your testimony. We observe

the 5-minute rule, and of course you have the lights in front of you.

STATEMENTS OF ERNEST J. GREGORY, ACTING ASSISTANT

SECRETARY FOR THE ARMY FOR FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

AND COMPTROLLER, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY; LIEUTENANT GENERAL JAMES R. HELMLY, CHIEF, ARMY RESERVES,

DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY; AND PATRICK T. SHINE, DIRECTOR, MILITARY AND CIVILIAN PAY SERVICES, DEFENSE

FINANCE AND ACCOUNTING SERVICE, DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, ma’am. In the interest of time, ma’am, you

have our oral testimony there submitted for the record. So in the

interest of time, I would like to summarize just shortly in less than

that 5 minutes and provide you with your need.

Bottom line, ma’am, is the witnesses and the findings that were

presented by our first panel by the Government Accountability Office and by the Army witnesses who had pay problems. That is a

totally unacceptable situation that those soldiers were put in and

that they have been put in. And I would tell you that we have been

working with the committee and the committee staff over the last,

at least 7 or 8 months, working on a plan and developing a plan.

We had 54 items of corrective actions that have been put into

place. Those are broken down by immediate, near-term, mid-term

and long-term. We have coordinated with the staff to make sure we

gave you the status as to exactly where we were. That was in the

testimony that the GAO provided.

I would tell you that the timeframe of the work that has been

done by GAO, which has been valuable to everyone, especially us

and the timeframe of the audit that was done relative to the U.S.

Army Reserve was about along the same time line of the issues

that they looked at. And I would tell you that our original plan

that was 54 action items for us that centered just on the National

Guard has been expanded to include those things that were found

by the GAO which were unique to the U.S. Army Reserve, because

many of the problems that were found under the National Guard

were similar to the ones that were also found for the USAR. There

93

were some Army Reserve issues that were separate and distinct

and we have added those to our corrective action plan.

It is our intention fully to work and continue to work with the

staff in the Government Accountability Office to make sure that we

continue to provide them updates, and we are diligent in working

this issue. We are fully partnered, we in the Army and the Defense

Finance and Accounting Service, who are our partners.

I would like to say briefly, ma’am, that it is important that as

partners everyone understand that the committee understand that

we are all part of this process. And I would tell you that from a

pay system’s standpoint that to easily look and to blame a system

is foolish, because the system needs input to work and the system

needs to understand what’s happening and where people are going,

and for that we, the Army, are responsible. And so as partners, we

are partnership in what we process and how we serve soldiers. We

are also partners on what we are going to do to correct this problem and what we have been doing and we are going to continue to

do it. Thank you, ma’am.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Gregory follows:]

94

95

96

97

98

99

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, Mr. Gregory.

General Helmly.

General HELMLY. Thank you, Congresswoman Blackburn. Just a

few points I would like to make. And I ask that the statement I

have prepared, similar to Assistant Secretary Gregory, be entered

into the record and accepted.

First, if I may refer back to the last panel, there was a question

as to responsibility. I wish to make clear that the responsibility inside the U.S. Army Reserve is mine and mine alone. I share ownership of the various processes and functions within the Army and

with the Department of Defense, that I accept complete and total

responsibility for the welfare, readiness and training of the U.S.

Army Reserve soldiers and I seek not to shirk that. That is the single reason why we have embarked upon, outside the confines, the

focused confines we have before us, of aid to our soldiers. We have

embarked upon probably the widest scope and most in-depth

change that we can bring to this institution.

I must tell you that one of our biggest challenges, though, is a

bureaucratic intransigence. All the textbooks that regard major organizational change, the good news is they are all right. The bad

news is we are learning they are all right because of the inertia

that we have in this labyrinth of conflicting, confused, muddled

policies and procedures, and I will be straightforward and honest.

It is a wonder anybody gets paid accurately. That is not the function of the system, as Mr. Gregory’s system, as much as it is the

confused, overlapping labyrinth of policies and procedures that we

use within the Department to go about personnel management and

pay management.

There was also a question as regards, ‘‘length of mobilization history.’’ Not even going back to Desert Shield, Desert Storm, which

was the first, large scale mobilization of reserve component forces

that we had since the Korean War, the facts are that we have been

in a continuous state of calls to active duty since about January

1996 under another authority, Presidential Ed Select Reserve callup, averaging 12 to 15,000 Army Reserve soldiers annually. Because of the relatively small numbers and intensity, if you will,

these problems escaped notice. I will tell you the same kinds of

problems were resident there. They were more manageable because

of the volume of soldiers being called to active duty was smaller

and it was for 6 months and there weren’t the unexpected extensions and that kind of thing. But largely, we experienced the same

kind of problems.

Some of this is information. When I assumed this position, I

found a large amount of ignorance across our force and families as

regards entitlements, authorizations, etc. We have embarked upon

an extensive command information program inside the Army Reserve to communicate in a timely and accurate way with our soldiers and our families and to not allow the setting of what I would

call false expectations as regards to frequency, duration, length of

calls to active duty, or the kinds of benefits and entitlements that

one receives when one is mobilized.

I believe it impractical to authorize for every unit a separate individual to deal with the pay systems, but certainly nothing is

probably more important to the soldier and the family than their

100

daily life support, compensation if you will. We are capable of correcting this problem. It will require courage and consistency on our

part. That is the single reason why I ask that the Army Reserve

be the first component of any of the armed services to move to the

Forward Compatible Pay System, followed by our being the first

component of any of the armed services to move to Defense Integrated Management of Human Resources system.

It is my professional judgment that given the nature of our all

volunteer force, the fact that it is all volunteer, that one of the single biggest challenges that we face in this era of an extended duration of a very stressful war is to retain our soldiers, sailors, Marines, Coast Guard men. They are talented, they are smart, they

are courageous and very loyal Americans, but it is my judgment

that when it comes to pay and personnel support, we are short on

delivery in the Department in terms of our policies, authorizations

and certainly, as we have seen here, the actual delivery of services.

And so I believe, though, that we are getting good support from

Mr. Gregory’s office, enthusiastic support. DFAS has in turn been

most cooperative. We do have all of the challenges of any large organization, shortage of resources, inclusive of time. I do believe we

know most of the problems. We are hard at work getting after

them, and we will correct them.

That’s my opening statement. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of General Helmly follows:]

101

102

103

104

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

112

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Shine.

Mr. SHINE. Congresswoman Blackburn, I would like to submit

my formal comments for the record and make a general comment

in the interest of time.

We have heard several of the witnesses on the first panel talk

about improper pay, and clearly that is an unacceptable standard

and we in DFAS partner with the Army and in sharing the responsibility for improving those actions.

I would like to harken back to a comment or question that Chairman Davis asked about did we not anticipate this, and the reality

is that the benefits and the lessons learned from the Gulf war did

tell us that we needed to improve our payroll systems. We recognized that two separate systems was not going to serve the readiness conditions of the Department of Defense in the future and

therefore launched on to the integrated pay and personnel system,

known as the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources

[DIMHRS]. When we recognized in the late 1990’s that wasn’t

going to be delivered as quickly as we had hoped it would because

of all the complexities involved, we worked with the Department of

Defense to identify an interim system known as the Forward Compatible Payroll System that could be designed using the same software that we were going to use for the Objective Integrated Payroll

System in order to give us a replacement.

You have heard Mr. Kutz talk about the fact that there are two

issues that are really on top of the list that we would like to be

able to fix for our deployed soldiers. The reality is one of them has

already been fixed. That is automation of the hardship duty pay,

which was done in April of this year and has saved countless, thousands of individual soldiers from having to suffer some of the same

problems that you heard from the first witness panel.

The other situation, is the fact that the system today does not

pay combat zone tax exclusion or does not properly withhold it in

the month in which it’s entitled, is one that we’ve taken a look at

that. And because of the age of the system, a deteriorated state,

which is why it is in need of replacement, it would take us longer

to fix that, than it would to actually deploy the interim system,

which is scheduled to come up in the spring of 2005, at which time

all Army Guard and Army Reserve soldiers, about 600,000 people,

would be placed on this new system, which we think is the right

way to go. And we think it is the best investment for DOD resources to do that and bring that up in the spring of 2005. And we

are on record and currently on schedule to make that happen.

But in the short term, recognizing the spring of 2005 is several

months away and there are still people being deployed in harm’s

way, we have partnered with the Army to put together what we

call a safety net. If that safety net had been in place when the individuals on the first panels had actually deployed, we believe the

lion’s share of those problems would never have existed or, if they

had, they would have been caught sooner.

A question that was placed to Mr. Kutz was how many of these

problems did the Department of Defense find and how many were

found by the GAO. We feel that situation would have been reversed

where the response was that 90 percent of them were not found by

113

the Department of Defense. We feel with the safety net we have

put into place today, in fact 90 percent would have been prevented

or found in time to fix the problems in a reasonable timeframe. But

the other reality is that while that’s the case, dealing with those

problems and taking care of them in a satisfactory manner is still

the standard we try to achieve. And I would like to publicly say

that I think the statement that Major Riggins gave and the situation that occurred to him where he was passed from one office to

another without a satisfactory conclusion was totally unacceptable,

and I want to personally apologize to him for that terrible inconvenience.

Those are the summation of my remarks, ma’am.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shine follows:]

114

115

116

117

118

119

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, sir. Mr. Shine, I think I will begin

with you.

Your integrated system, you are looking at having ready in

spring of 2005?

Mr. SHINE. The interim system is not an integrated system. It is

a replacement for the current payroll system which we call the Defense Joint Military Pay System. It has two components, an active

component called AC and a reserve component piece called RC.

And as General Helmly has already said, the RC portion is really

designed to pay monthly drill pay. It was never designed to pay reservists who are deployed for long periods of active duty. That’s the

real failure with the system and that needs to be fixed.

The Forward Compatible Payroll System will fix the fact that we

will no longer have two separate and distinct payroll systems. We

will be able to take care of any soldier regardless of their component on one payroll system. That is the good news. The bad news

unfortunately is it will not be integrated with the personnel system, so many of the problems you’ve heard described here today

that occurred because we didn’t have good personnel accountability

or we didn’t have timely input from the personnel system, will not

be fixed by the interim system that will be fielded in 2005, but will

be fixed when the objective system known as DIMHRS is fielded.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. So your interim system will be ready in 2005

and your DIMHRS system, what is your time line on that?

Mr. SHINE. The DIMHRS system is not being developed by DFAS

but actually being developed by the Office of the Under Secretary

of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and they have a timeframe

that they are going to be fielding—and it varies by each service.

And so the Army date—I will defer to Mr. Gregory.

Mr. GREGORY. We have been advised that we should expect to

have the Army Reserve and Army National Guard, because that is

our first choice to put the reserve component, no later than March

calendar year 2006.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. So we are developing an interim system that

will go in the spring of 2005 and then the permanent system

should be ready in March 2006?

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, ma’am. And to clarify that, as Mr. Shine said,

the problem that the forward compatible pay system will solve and

why it is so important, even though it is not integrated, it is going

to solve the problem that Sergeant DeLain had when she mentioned that, well, I got my pay but it comes in four different checks.

When forward compatible pay comes in, nobody will be getting four

separate checks to figure out what’s my total pay. There will be

one.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Yes, sir. We appreciate that. And one of the

things we would like to have, if you all do not mind, is the cost estimate of what you think it is going to end up costing to implement, develop and implement this system for its first year of implementation and then the human capital and personnel needs that

are required by developing and implementing this system.

Mr. SHINE. Ma’am, just for clarification, which system?

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I want both of them, the forward compatible

pay and then the DIMHRS system.

Mr. SHINE. We will be happy to provide that to you.

120

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. Mr.

Gregory, what actions have you taken to correct the specific pay

problems that were identified in the GAO case study?

Mr. GREGORY. We have provided for your reference a copy of the

work statements and the issues that we have been working with

the committee on for this past 8 months. And those, ma’am, are directed at again, as I said, immediate corrective actions. And by immediate, means within 60 days; near term, mid term and long

term. And long term, of course, the last one is the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System, and as we said, it has

been promised us by March 2006. But, ma’am, some of the things

we have concentrated on—and because we haven’t looked at doing

a lot of systems work and investment to redress the issues in this

GAO report for the U.S. Army Reserve. We concentrated on training, on process, on information. And ma’am, on page 6 of the report, you can get a feel for exactly the kind of things it includes

in there. And one of the things that is included, as Mr. Shine referred to, the fix of hardship duty pay location, that hardship duty

pay location affects quite a few. And 89 percent of the problems

of——

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Gregory, I appreciate that and we will

have this as a part of the record. I am asking about the specific

pay problems of those 348 soldiers in that case study.

Mr. GREGORY. Every one of the pay problems that was found for

the Guard and/or the Reserve—I mean both different reports—but

we handled the same way. We worked directly with GAO. And as

GAO found the problems, we worked for the Army Reserve. We

worked directly with the Army Reserve Command down at Fort

McPherson, GA and we have worked with the unit that has been

established at Fort McCoy, WI, as a centralized unit.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I don’t understand from your answer, sir, that

you all have addressed the individual specific problems for those

enlisted men and women?

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, ma’am.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Each 1 of the 348?

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, ma’am.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. We want to be certain of that. We appreciate

the efforts that you’re making in the aggregate, but I’ll say that we

continue to have a certain amount of frustration that we hear we’re

moving forward on systems and we’re moving forward on addressing the pay problems for units as a whole, but it seems as if systems don’t get developed as quickly as they should and time lines

are not established and adhered to, so that continues to be a problem.

You know, Major Riggins said in his testimony that his problems

had not been addressed or fixed. Is someone going to address that?

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, ma’am.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. General Helmly, I like that Airborne patch on

your shoulder.

General HELMLY. No partiality to the 101st at Fort Campbell.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. You can be partial all you want. You absolutely can. We think that the men and women at Fort Campbell

have done excellent work as well as our reservists and our guardsmen in Tennessee who have been very active in this effort in the

121

past couple of years, and we are very grateful to them. And when

we have individuals that have problems with pay and families that

have problems with pay, it does cause us to be concerned. And I

appreciate the fact that you take total responsibility for the training and the goodwill of those fine men and women, and we share

with you the frustration of muddled processes and procedures. I

think that is frustrating for everyone involved, and so we do appreciate that you’re placing some energy and effort into being certain

that the deployments have predictability, that they have a system

which is easily navigated for those families. You are responsible for

what is actually overall a relatively small portion of the mobilization and pay process when you look at the total deployment. And

how would you describe your command role in resolving the pay

situation that we are facing today?

General HELMLY. Congresswoman, first, I think it’s necessary to

reflect that, as has already been noted, in large measure many of

the pay performance problems emanate from personnel matters;

that is, a failure to post records. In other cases, the authority,

sometimes in law, have not been modernized. Largely all our personnel procedures as related to reserve component, systems, authorities, etc., were built for a different era and our assumption

was that we would mobilize virtually the entire force and bring it

to active duty, processes and systems.

I believe you are aware of the fact that in Desert Shield and

Desert Storm we placed all mobilized and reserve component members on DJMS active component. That was a part of that view, so

be it, it resulted in improved pay, but a disastrous process wherein

large numbers of servicemembers as we demobilized continued to

receive active duty pay and we endured some horror stories of overpayments and recoupment and the hardships enacted on families

and the members. My responsibility begins with, if you will, prior

to mobilization, disciplining the records keeping, the personnel systems and processes and the updating of data bases and records. We

are placing a great deal of command emphasis on that because

even with Forward Compatible Pay system and ultimately

DIMHRS we’ll only be as good as the input that is in a timely, accurate way. We are disciplining our employees and members

throughout the field with regard to a responsiveness.

You’ll pardon me, one of the reasons I am drinking coffee instead

of water, I am recovering from jet lag from just returning from

Iraq, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Kuwait. As I talked to our soldiers, one of their biggest complaints was as they send an e-mail

back, which is a more common means today, than telephone call or

snail mail as they call it, a complaint or a question, and they say,

‘‘sir, I don’t get a response.’’ I must tell you that I—let’s say in kind

words, energize the chain of command when I find that on specific

soldiers in units and then use that as a source of command emphasis through the chain of command at large. It is my judgment, as

I said, we must improve that care and concern. So it starts prior

to mobilization.

Second, we have a policy which has had the effect of, once we

have mobilized reserve component members, telling the parent

chain of command everything is now the responsibility of a different chain of command. I must tell you there has been some fricVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:38 Feb 28, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00125 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96995.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
122

tion because while I don’t intend to try to exert direct control, I believe that I retain ultimate responsibility because that soldier is

going to return to the Army Reserve. And if we want to retain

them, we can’t cut this off in a black and white kind of way, plus

their family is still on this end. And I retain direct responsibility

for ensuring their families get the proper entitlements and are

cared for. So we are working all of those pieces hard.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. So what I’m understanding you to say is that

basically this system was not updated over the past decade?

General HELMLY. Yes, ma’am. That’s correct.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. So what you have is an archaic, labor-intensive

system that did not avail itself of developing technologies in an appropriate timeframe?

General HELMLY. That is correct, and it is built on an outdated

system of policies.

Last point I wish to make is in some way, in many ways, the

cumbersome nature of this system has been confounded by the very

overly rigid, centralized mobilization process we have used that has

caused the late notice, innumerable changes at the last moment,

etc., and all of those confound the people who are trying to input

pay and personnel data.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Let me ask you one more thing, Mr. Hemly. Do

you need specific targeted help in addition to what you currently

have to run your program until the promised technology comes online in either spring 2005 and then spring 2006?

General HELMLY. I don’t wish to say no. That would imply that

we——

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Realistically.

General HELMLY. I don’t know of an area where we would require Congress’ help. I think we’re getting it here seriously today.

This helps shed visibility. The newly renamed Government Accountability Office reports, while many shy at those, have been

very helpful in focusing us. I think the area where we need support

is to maintain the resourcing stream and to maintain the congressional emphasis on the Department’s reform efforts toward pay and

personnel systems and processes.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I can guarantee you are going to continue to

have Congress’ efforts, because we have constituents who are very

concerned, as are we, for them about these matters.

Mr. Shine, back to you and Mr. Gregory, and this is a simple yes

or no, the deadline or the goal, the time line for your forward pay

system in 2005 and then the DIMHRS system in 2006, how realistic are those deadlines and what are you doing to be certain that

those get met?

Mr. Shine first.

Mr. SHINE. Specifically, as it relates to the forward compatible

payroll system, we have gone through all the proper milestone improvement schedules. We have a specific project development plan

that includes not only the development of the system, but also the

testing and training and fielding of that system. Up till this past

month we have been monitoring that on a monthly basis in trying

to apply resources in those areas where we didn’t feel we were

right on schedule. Starting this month, we have gone to weekly updates with that same intention in mind. If we continue to stay on

123

schedule, and we currently are right now on schedule, sometime at

the end of August, we should start the initial testing of the integrated pieces of the system. Because of the way we are trying to

field this system as quickly as we are, we are actually fielding this

one quicker than most systems of this magnitude. We are actually

retaining the existing personnel systems, input systems and everything that the payroll system today talks to. So we call it an integration broker, a ring around, if you will, this commercial off-theshelf software payroll system and making it link to all those other

systems. That seems to be the most difficult part. Today as we

speak at this point in time, we are on schedule for a March delivery to bring all the Guard, Army Guard and Reserve onto the Forward Compatible Payroll System in mid-month of March 2005.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Is this system being built on the same platform that your system is going to be built on or are we going to

reinvent the wheel?

Mr. SHINE. It is using the exact same software, which is basically

a PeopleSoft product.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Gregory.

Mr. GREGORY. First, on forward compatible pay to your earlier

question to General Helmly, the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army

went to the Defense Finance and Accounting Service and said we

need this forward compatible pay as soon as we can get it. Is there

something we, the Army, as your customer can give to you in terms

of resources to help you serve our soldiers better? The answer from

DFAS was we are on a very quick time line, as Mr. Shine stated,

and that we want to make sure that it’s properly tested, and putting money on it will not make it happen sooner, which means that

we are working with DFAS on the time line they have established

and we expect as their customer to have that in August—excuse

me, in March. What we have asked DFAS to do is to enter into the

operational phase and to identify a battalion for OIF 3 that we

could help them and be part of their operational testing, which

means an early test to see let’s see how forward compatible pay

does in comparison to the old legacy system. And we are working

with DFAS in partnership to help them through their operational

test phase.

And with regard to DIMHRS, I can only tell you as a service who

intends to be the first one in DOD on to DIMHRS—and I can tell

you—and I am not the developer, I am a customer—I can tell you

two things: No. 1, the Army has been involved with the DIMHRS

effort since day 1. The Army again has a fully qualified, very expert finance officer, Army finance officer working with the Army

DIMHRS’s office to make sure that issue of integration of pay and

personnel comes to fruition. That person is on board and working

and we have done that over the years of development, and there

have been many. As we have been told that we would have it to

use in the U.S. Army Reserve—as General Helmly said, we have

been told and updated as of this morning that March 2006 is the

date we are going to have it.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Is this being developed in-house?

Mr. GREGORY. It is using, as Mr. Shine said, PeopleSoft—the

processes and integration takes the people in-house to determine

124

that, but the software itself, no, ma’am. The software itself is a

commercial off-the-shelf product and it is PeopleSoft.

General HELMLY. May I add one point to make sure it is correctly understood? This is a joint system. All of the services ultimately go into this, which adds to its capabilities, because as noted

in the first panel, we have soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines

who have to go with each other increasingly in joint formations and

then where we have service members who transfer from one service

to another, we are able to subsequently not lose their pay records,

promotions and all of those things in the process as happens most

frequently today.

So this is a Department of Defense initiative with the full and

complete input, and in our case we can speak authoritatively.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. We appreciate that. One of the frustrations

that we have here is the fact that we have heard more than once

that DOD has over 2,300 different accounting systems, that there

is truly a lack of interface, that you do not have an enterprise technology, enterprise structure and a platform that all of these different financial accounting programs and personnel management

programs run from. Now the problem with that to those of us that

maybe aren’t computer geniuses, and we are not a computer whiz

and we are here trying to manage through these situations with

our constituents, and the problem with that is we are always going

back to square one. And you know, then we get into the excuses,

well, we told you last year we were going to do this, but we haven’t

made any progress because of—this system doesn’t talk to another

system. And if we are going to build this and if we are still some

months out, for goodness sakes, it seems to make sense that we

would plan ahead just a little bit so that things are not as labor

intensive, so that we do have systems that are through the different branches of the military that can talk to one another. And

that just seems to make some good common sense there, and we

certainly would hope that it will help with addressing that pay

process.

But I turn it—Mr. Schrock, do you have any questions.

Mr. SCHROCK. No.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. I know our chairman is trying to come back

here. Mr. Shine, I want to hear from you before we finish this up.

If I have some of our wonderful Tennessee volunteers who are in

the Guard and they are going to be activated, how many different

pieces of paper at this point in time right now, how many different

pieces of paper, how many different forms are they going to have

to fill out in order to get their pay? Is it four, is it five, how many

will it be?

Mr. SHINE. I’m not exactly sure how many pieces of paper it will

take, but I can get you an answer for the record. We actually share

the mobilization process with the Army and so there are some

Army forms, there are some DFAS forms, and I will get you an answer for the record.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Thank you, sir. And that will be helpful to us.

Mr. Shine, let me ask you this also. You all were using a commercial off-the-shelf system, the PeopleSoft. OK, how much modification are you having to do to that to have it for your forward

compatible pay system?

125

Mr. SHINE. Ma’am, I am not a technical expert, but let me do the

best I can and at least try to get to the spirit of your question.

PeopleSoft has a version that they call North American, which is

the primary payroll engine that they sell to hundreds of private

companies to do their payroll operations here in the United States.

And what it really means is it is configured for the normal Federal

tax withholdings, State tax withholdings, Social Security, and the

things that normally occur to most private businesses here in the

United States.

Unfortunately, when we actually sat down—and I am actually,

I apologize, I am really talking about the DIMHRS effort, when it

first took a look at this piece of software. There was a determination made that the specific algorithm and logic of that particular

piece of software would not work for the unique requirements of

the U.S. military. There are so many unique legislative entitlements that individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines are entitled to that the software that was being used, called PeopleSoft

North American, would not work for the Department of Defense.

However, PeopleSoft also sells their product to foreign organizations, and so they have another version they call PeopleSoft Global,

and it is really designed to work in foreign countries where, as opposed to already having an existing structure, you basically build

the logic and algorithms that supports the tax structure and the

various withholding requirements of those foreign countries.

We found that we were able to use the PeopleSoft Global software and actually build the unique legislative entitlements that accrued to the Department of Defense service members very well.

And so, as a result of that, when the DIMHRS program management office decided to engage the PeopleSoft Global software, we

in DFAS, when we got approval to develop the interim system,

adopted the exact same software platform. We are using the exact

same license that the Department of Defense already purchased.

We did not have to purchase a new license, and the only thing we

are having to do additional to that, ma’am, is not to affect the computation of the software itself as it computes pay.

But I mentioned earlier this sort of ring that we had to put

around it that we call an integration broker that allows the

PeopleSoft software to talk to the existing personnel systems and

accounting systems that are in existence today. With DIMHRS that

will not be necessary because it won’t have to talk to and interface

with a different personnel system. The HR system and the payroll

system will be integrated, and that is what the PeopleSoft product

delivers.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Now, are you doing that in-house, or are you

outsourcing that? Do you have a contractor doing that?

Mr. SHINE. It is actually a combination of both. Most of the requirements determination is coming from government, most of the

software development is coming from contractors who are experienced in working with this particular product.

Mrs. BLACKBURN. OK. Our concern is, when we hear a commercial off-the-shelf product, it has to have an enormous amount of

modification. It seems like there are problems with that and getting it up and ready to run.

126

Mr. Schrock, I know that you were on the original GAO study.

Would you like to, since you had requested that study, ask a few

questions?

Mr. SCHROCK. I apologize for my lateness. I was chairing a committee, and it seemed to go forever. So I apologize, because this is

an issue that is very important to me. As all of you know, I am

a Navy guy. I know that is probably not too popular to say with

this group. But we experienced problems like this when I was active duty, but it seems like it is even more egregious now. So let

me go down and try to play catch up here a little bit.

Mr. Shine, what has been done to identify the gaps by GAO and

the number of soldiers ordered to active duty and the number who

show up at mobilization stations and the overpayment problems

that are a result of these accountability breakdowns? We heard

that in other hearings in the past and wondered if there had been

some resolution to this or some correction to this.

Mr. SHINE. Well, Congressman Schrock, I will tell you that personnel accountability is really an Army issue. Clearly, it is a direct

driver and has a huge impact on whether we are going to be able

to pay the people correctly. So if I could answer the second part of

that question first, and then I will defer to the Army to answer the

first part.

Mr. SCHROCK. Great.

Mr. SHINE. What we have done, sir, is we have established since

the first report to when we first reported back to your committee

back in January of this year, we have established a safety net that

we are working with the Guard and Reserve where we get identified to us the specific unit identification codes of the units that are

mobilizing so that we can review to make sure that every soldier

in that unit in fact got all their activity duty entitlements started

correctly. And then the reverse situation when they are demobilizing to ensure that everybody who is in fact demobilized in fact was

removed and had their active duty entitlements removed.

We do run into issues, as you would expect, with situations for

soldiers injured that are for some reason injured while they are on

active duty, and they have to be retained in a hospital status, because obviously they are going to retain their active duty entitlements.

But we feel with this safety net, sir, that we have actually been

able to significantly reduce—I will not tell you it is with 100 percent, but I think we significantly reduced the causes of overpayments that were referenced in the original GAO report on the

Army National Guard.

Mr. SCHROCK. I may be asking things that have already been

asked, so I ask your forgiveness on that. Why couldn’t this have

been foreseen, these problems we have?

Mr. SHINE. Well, sir, I——

Mr. SCHROCK. I always look at the military as being so precise,

so definite, so everything that is so perfect. And then when you see

things like this happen, you wonder why did this happen? How

could this have been allowed to happen?

Mr. SHINE. And, sir, what I can tell you is we realized back in

the 1990’s that we had an issue with the system that we have, that

the system that we have is not the proper system to take care of

127

these types of payments. And the Department launched onto an objective to produce an integrated payment personnel system that we

call DIMHRS, the Defense Integrative Military Human Resource

System.

Nobody knew at that time that we were going to have these

major deployments. Once we started seeing an increase in deployments at the time when we were going in the late 1990’s into

Kosovo and Croatia and those countries, we realized that the system we had was starting to get very, very fragile. And it was based

on that, sir, that caused us to say that while DIMHRS is our objective solution, we need to get something soon, because the system

we have now just will not work. Which was the genesis for the interim system we call Forward Compatible Pay. And while I and I

think everybody that we pay would love to have had the Forward

Compatible Pay System here already, the reality is we, sir, is we

have put it on as fast a track as it can be in order to get it deployed as soon as possible.

Mr. SCHROCK. Mr. Shine, correct me if I am wrong. Didn’t some

of these problems exist in Gulf I?

Mr. SHINE. Well, sir, actually the problem——

Mr. SCHROCK. I’m sorry. Excuse me. And if they did, and they

did and I think some of them did, why—that is 9, what, 9 years

later. I was wondering why it took so long.

Mr. SHINE. And actually, sir, you are right. There were problems.

As a matter of fact, there was a 1993 GAO report that General

Helmly was discussing just a little while ago. In those days, sir, we

still had the two separate payroll systems, but in the Gulf war we

actually moved the Reserve and Guard soldiers to the active system. We created a huge problem at the conclusion of the war, because, unfortunately, because of the lack of integration between

pay and personnel we retained people on that active system, they

continued to get paid literally millions of dollars. Congress got involved, and Congress had to actually pass legislation that waived

many of those debts at that time. And it was a determination made

at that time within the Department of Defense that the better way

to do this until we had everybody on one system was to keep mobilized Guard and Reserve soldiers on the Reserve Component Pay

System, sir, which has led to many of the customer service issues

that you have heard enunciated both in the January hearing and

this hearing today.

Mr. SCHROCK. Secretary Rumsfeld recently appointed an independent commission to look at the overhauling of the military pay

system. Will DIMHRS wait for the results of the study? And what

if the findings don’t jell with DIMHRS, what is going to happen?

Mr. GREGORY. Sir, if I may.

Mr. SCHROCK. Yes, sir.

Mr. GREGORY. Congressman Schrock, I would say that I hope to

God DIMHRS doesn’t wait.

Mr. SCHROCK. Doesn’t what?

Mr. GREGORY. That it doesn’t wait.

Mr. SCHROCK. Oh, wait. Wait. I thought you said it doesn’t work.

Mr. GREGORY. Oh, no, sir.

Mr. SCHROCK. And I was going to say, we have a real problem

if that is the case. We have a bigger problem than I thought.

128

Mr. GREGORY. No, sir. You asked if DIMHRS would wait for the

outcome. And I would tell you that the best laboratory we have had

for what we need in DIMHRS has been what we have been going

through over the last couple of years. And what we are doing with

regard to our plan for corrective action that we discussed at the

last committee hearing and that we have brought up again today

is to make sure that all the lessons learned we are getting from

the first panel of our soldiers who were here with pay problems

today, that we are looking at exactly how is DIMHRS going to address this. Do we have the right processes in place?

Now, a question was asked before, sir, about when is DIMHRS

going to be delivered to the Army, because we are first to get

DIMHRS, and that has now have been targeted and been advised

to me today, this morning, that it is going to be March 2006.

Mr. SCHROCK. 2006?

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, sir. So I would say that there is time for the

Secretary of Defense’s special study to be taken under consideration and given the time line that we are on and when we expect

delivery. And, but I don’t want you to think that March 2006 is the

only timeline and you won’t see any improved systems until then.

Mr. Shine discussed and clearly explained how.

Because of that long time line, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service came up with an interim solution, albeit interim, and

nonintegrative with personnel, but it is the Forward Compatible

Pay System. And that we should have in the Army and first in the

Reserves in—Pat, correct me. Tell me exactly the date for Forward

Compatible Pay?

Mr. SHINE. For who?

Mr. GREGORY. FCP. What is the date?

Mr. SHINE. March 2005.

Mr. GREGORY. March 2005. A year earlier.

Mr. SCHROCK. And if they told you this morning March 2006, I

guess I have been in government long enough to know it is probably going to slip a little.

Mr. GREGORY. Well, sir, I would tell you that Secretary Rumsfeld

asked: We have to move this forward. Tell me how long. And that

has been the—and tell me when it will be available. That was the

date provided, and the date provided to us as the customer.

Mr. SCHROCK. Let me ask you, General, in your opinion, what is

going to be the effect of pay system failures on your retention efforts once stop loss has been lifted for returning units? Are they

just going to get so fed up they are going to say I am out of here?

Lieutenant General HELMLY. Thank you, Congressman. That in

my judgment is the central point to make the point earlier. Given

the stresses and strains on the force and the pressures of war, this

is the first extended duration conflict of this intensity we have

fought with an all volunteer force, and our soldiers are long on

courage and competence, short on patience. To date, we have seen

no specific——

Mr. SCHROCK. Typical Americans, in other words?

General HELMLY. Yes, sir, and I must say that I am one of those

who is short on patience as well.

I have seen no specific noticeable decline in retention. However,

that candidly is a part of the problem. Because as I have apVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:38 Feb 28, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00132 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96995.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
129

proached for varying authorities and changes in retention policies,

entitlements, and procedures, the inertia of the bureaucracy says,

you don’t have a problem, you don’t need that. We have to change

the way we think, and that is to be preventive minded.

I believe that the effect on retention will certainly be negative.

I am unable to quantify that. But it will not be solely because of

pay. It will be the combination of pay and personnel systems and

policies that our soldiers see as harmful and deleterious to their

personal and family welfare.

Mr. SCHROCK. Mr. Chairman, just let me ask one more question,

if I can. And let me preface it by saying the only day I don’t like

the Army is when they play Navy. The rest of the time I think they

are great. And I have been to Afghanistan and Iraq a few times,

and they are absolutely amazing people.

General HELMLY. Congressman, the feeling is mutual, I will assure you.

Mr. SCHROCK. I accept that.

Mr. Shine, how do you characterize the soldiers, or anybody for

that matter, who would accept active duty pay month after month

without reporting for active duty, and what actions have been

taken to pursue those folks and collect those payments? They had

to know at some point they were going to get——

Mr. SHINE. And, sir, I would just say that each one of those is

on an individual case-by-case basis. There are actually some overpayments where—and we had a mockup here of the leave and

earning statement here earlier, that in some cases, before we made

some of the improvements we made to the leave and earning statement, it was somewhat difficult especially when there were things

happening to a soldier’s pay, when there were multiple transactions occurring, it actually could have caused confusion, in which

case I think we would take a look at that and make a judgment

on our own that it was probably something that was difficult to determine.

In cases where we think it probably was a situation where a prudent person would have known that they were receiving overpayments, we normally refer those to an investigative body, either the

Defense Criminal Investigative Service or the Criminal Investigative Division of the Army, for their determination of any criminal

wrongdoing or fraud.

Mr. SCHROCK. And the opposite of that as well. Some soldiers

were not paid month after month after month after month, which

I think caused them great harm financially at home. And I am hoping—that may have been discussed earlier, but I am praying to

goodness that got solved as well.

Mr. SHINE. That is an unacceptable standard. And that is what

the safety net that I discussed earlier, sir, was put in place, with

the intention of trying to prevent those types of situations from occurring.

General HELMLY. May I add one point?

Mr. SCHROCK. Yes, sir.

General HELMLY. While we are here focused on pay, the facts are

that we in the Army Reserve Command find that our most accurate

data—and this may be shared—regarding who is mobilized for

what length of time, and the number of soldiers mobilized actually

130

comes from the DFAS data base. We do that for two reasons. First,

if soldiers are not getting paid, they are going to complain. And,

second, we have such a confused labyrinth of orders, etc., in the

mobilization process that we are simply almost incapable of getting

accuracy regarding personnel accountability. And so we get our

most accurate data regarding Army Reserve personnel accountability and numbers, etc., from DFAS.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS [presiding]. Thank you, Mr. Schrock, and I appreciate your standing in as the ranking member and I had to manage

a bill on the floor dealing with financial accountability with the Department of Homeland Security. So I appreciate your working with

Mrs. Blackburn and running the hearing in our absence.

Mr. SCHROCK. Well, Mrs. Blackburn really did it, and I came in

and she yielded.

Mr. PLATTS. I will be sure to let Marsha know you gave her appropriate credit.

I want to thank each of you belatedly for your participation here

today and your testimonies, and also your patience in getting started and us having to run in and out of the hearing. And, also, both

General Helmly, your service in uniform and your two colleagues

on the civilian side, all of you, your service to our Nation is much

appreciated. And we know you are doing your best to do right by

all the men and women in uniform. That is certainly what we are

all about.

I will try to gather my thoughts and not duplicate too much what

has already been addressed by other members and the staff we are

working with. Let me start with one of the issues that I think it

was Major Riggins and his recommendations that would help cut

through, and this deals kind of with any entity where you are dealing with clients. And I will say for the soldier being a client, in the

sense of if they are not being paid right and they are coming to the

Department, to whichever branch, for assistance and the customer

service, he described what I would characterize as an ombudsman’s

office, where there is kind of a one-stop shop. Where does that

stand? I know we are trying to, like the Cleveland center, to consolidate. But where does the trouble shooting office stand right now

as far as troops who have difficulties?

Mr. GREGORY. Sir, if I may.

Mr. PLATTS. Yes.

Mr. GREGORY. We will take both sides of our reserve component.

In the National Guard Bureau, as a result of Congressman Shay’s

recommendation, at the hearing, at the committee hearing, full

committee hearing, he recommended the ombudsman be established, and that has been established in the National Guard Bureau and the ombudsman office. And there has been a bunch of 800

numbers established, and that has been propagated into information and in pamphlets, and every soldier gets to see that and carries a trifold, a little item that he gets and tells them, if you have

a pay problem here is where you go.

Now, at the same time, I would tell you that the U.S. Army Reserve has had a central place to go. It wasn’t called an ombudsman’s shop, but it is a central place to go, and that is the element

that exists at Fort McCoy, WI. And, in effect, I would tell you that

131

the U.S. Army Reserve led that, because they have had that established even before we had our hearing and before these findings

come out. But as a result of doing it in the Guard, we have worked

with the Army Reserve, and the Army Reserve is going to establish

at Fort McCoy, WI with the facility they have an ombudsman, and

to make sure that ombudsman has all the communication lines

they need so that a soldier or family member, a spouse that has

problems can go forward and say, hey, I am so and so, and I have

this problem. Help me.

Mr. PLATTS. Is the existing office with the Guard and the Reserve and this kind of more formalizing I guess this ombudsman’s

office with the Reserve, is it something that is 24 hours a day, you

know; in other words, anticipating the troops deploy at different

times around the world, their ability that when it is their morning,

it is night here, or vice versa, you know. Is there going to be not

just numbers or e-mail but actually——

Mr. GREGORY. Mr. Chairman, I am going to be honest with you.

I can’t tell you what the hours of operation or availability are. I

will find that out and certainly submit it in writing for the record.

Mr. PLATTS. My reason for asking is we are making this as easy

as possible, especially for those deployed troops that, you know, on

their schedule, their timeframe, that we are available to trouble

shoot. Because I think financial stress is a key challenge for any

family. And especially when you have family members serving in

harm’s way, adding financial stress, is really a deadly mix.

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, Mr. Chairman. I would like to also say, because of referring to Major Riggins’ comment where, no matter who

he called and no matter where he went to in customer service, he

was sent back to the first place. And, sir, I would refer to you in

here and to our corrective action plan, you will see that one of the

actions that we have taken is to train and advise and to bring and

to make responsible as part of our mobilization, demobilization

standard operating procedure, is that no matter where you go as

a soldier, whatever finance office you go to, wherever it may be,

that finance office becomes responsible to solve your problem.

Mr. PLATTS. So no passing of the buck?

Mr. GREGORY. That is correct, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. That is great to hear, and it has to be frustrating.

You know, you are trying to get resolution and you are sent back,

kind of like that perpetual customer service desk where you are

just in the loop, you never actually get any assistance. And, again,

especially for our troops deployed, they don’t get passed along, but

that somebody really does take responsibility.

I do commend the Department in response to the GAO report

last November and the hearing in January with the Guard and a

lot of which we realize carries over to the Reserves, that the Department is being very proactive in moving forward with those recommendations and even other actions that weren’t part of the recommendations, to address these very serious problems, that we do

right by each and every man and woman in uniform.

You referenced what the Guard is doing with an ombudsman.

One of the things that I was interested in that came out of the

GAO report is the guard booklet, which is a one-stop shop in print

for the troops on where to go. I do notice that this is for the Guard

132

specifically, in the way it is marketed. Is there an equivalent for

the Reserve?

Mr. GREGORY. Sir, the items that were found that were as a result of GAO’s report on the U.S. Army Reserve versus—or in addition to the National Guard, we have taken all of those other type

of findings, different things. There are things that we have opened.

And certainly the best ideas we intend to bring to the U.S. Army

Reserve, and to do that, to make sure that is done. There is already

an information pamphlet that is out from the U.S. Army Reserve,

but we intend to make sure that same information is available to

the U.S. reservists.

Mr. PLATTS. It is not yet in this format? Because this seems like

a very good, user friendly format: Here it is. If you have any questions, here is who to call, here is what to do.

Mr. GREGORY. Mr. Chairman, the outcome of this review that

was expanded to the Reserve with the corrective actions will include that.

Mr. PLATTS. I am glad to hear that. But, General, if could just—

why it took a followup inquiry on the Reserve versus——

Mr. GREGORY. Sir, the difference was that in the Guard, the

Guard was 54 separate entities and is 54 separate entities as opposed to the U.S. Army Reserve, which took the initiative to establish a single point of contact at Fort McCoy, WI.

So our question was, was it necessary? Was it required? Once we

found—and notwithstanding it is a great idea, but once we understood that, hey, we have a similar problem with the Army Reserve

notwithstanding the initiative that the Reserves took, then we are

going to act on it.

Mr. PLATTS. Great.

General.

General HELMLY. Congressman, two aspects. The handbook deals

with soldier and family information as to entitlements, processes,

systems, redress, procedures, etc. In addition, we have just published—and I hold in my hand—the first of June, standing operating procedures which guide and try to discipline those in the provision chain, all the way from unit administrators to the people

working input stations and mobilization stations. This was coordinated with both DFAS and Mr. Gregory’s office, because those—

they govern the systems and processes. We have established out of

St. Louis a citizen Web site. It is new. It provides accurate Webbased information response. We have put I won’t say hundreds of

millions, but millions of dollars into modernizing the pay support

center at Fort McCoy as well as St. Louis on the personnel side,

trying to provide the modernized technology for recording for immediate response interface between voice and e-mail and data

bases. All of those are new.

I must tell you part of this is culture change. Those processes

and bureaucracies have in the past not been sensitive to soldier

and family requirements, and so a large part of our effort is on putting starch in that, if you will, with command emphasis. And,

where necessary, I must tell you—you spoke to the issue of over—

or Congressman Schrock did, I apologize, to overpayments. Similar

to that higher in the chain of command you go, we initiate the disVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:38 Feb 28, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00136 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96995.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
133

ciplinary actions to try to send a message that the old days of sloppiness, inaccuracy, and insensitivity are over. They are just gone.

Mr. PLATTS. And I am glad to hear that, and I think that is a

very important message to be sent, that these are serious issues

and deserve everyone’s full attention. Again, I appreciate the

proactive approach that is now going and Chairman Davis and

Chairman Shays and others, who have been part of this effort in

helping to push that effort, because it’s somewhat frustrating when

you look at the GAO report of 1993 that showed after the Desert

Storm what happened; and as we went through the 1990’s and

knew we were relying more and more on Guard and Reserve, and

are seeing that with the existing numbers of deployed, over 150,000

Guard and Reserve who are active now. All the more that this has

to be a priority because it is the way our force structure is set up,

and it is going to continue to be the way of doing business.

So I have some other questions, but I want to yield to my ranking member, the gentleman from New York, Mr. Towns.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Let me also apologize. I was a part of the bill that they have on

the floor, and I am not sure whether these questions that I am

going to raise have been asked already. But the point is I was not

here. So I would be happy that you repeat at least for my understanding and for the record as well just in case.

Mr. Gregory, for the past 10 years DOD has been on GAO’s

watchlist. Why, after 10 years, has DOD been unable to successfully modernize its military pay system so that our soldiers are not

subject to the errors and details to the first panel’s testimony in

terms of all kind of mistakes have been made? Why haven’t we

been able to move along and show some improvement over the past

10 years?

Mr. GREGORY. Congressman Towns, I would say that there has

been change over the last 10 years, but it has been marginal and

incremental. We have been brought to an understanding because of

the engagements we are currently involved in and the level of engagements, and how that really has impacted our reserve component that, as General Helmly said, we need a sea change, and we

haven’t done a sea change. We are doing a sea change now. We are

in the middle right now of looking at—and I would tell you that

it is certainly needed. We have the need and we have identified the

need to do integrated processes with personnel. Personnel actions

drive pay. And it is because of those that we are looking for and

have been in development of an integrated personnel and payroll

system for many years, I would say at least seven. But because it

is a joint system, not just serving the Army, not just serving Army

reservists, but the whole department, Army, Navy, Marine Corps—

and I would tell you, too, that the Coast Guard intends that once

we have it developed that they intend to adopt it. Sir, I would tell

you that getting all of the individual requirements of the individual

services, getting all of those nuances that exist together into an integrated process that will result in proper pay actions, timely and

accurate pay actions has taken an awful long time. But, sir, it

wasn’t because we were denying the problem. We just haven’t gotten there.

134

Mr. TOWNS. Do you have a timetable as to when you might get

there?

Mr. GREGORY. Sir, I was asked previously. But right now at the

Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System, which is the

integrated personnel and payroll system, is to be available for our

use and have people on the system in the Army—because the Army

will be first and the Reserve component in the Army will be first.

It is now targeted and scheduled for March 2006.

Mr. TOWNS. That is good to know. That is good news. Lieutenant

General Helmly, let me ask you. I guess from a morale standpoint,

I am concerned that the problems being experienced by our reservists will discourage them from continuing to serve in the future.

Can you provide us with any statistics on the number of reservists

who are not re-signing once their term expires because they are

just sort of fed up with the fact that there is a lot of confusion

around the pay and it has created hardships for their family? Do

you have any statistics on this?

General HELMLY. Congressman, first of all, let me state this, and

I state not for advertisement. The most frustrated soldier in the

Army Reserve regarding the antiquity of the personnel, personnel

bureaucracy and the policies is myself. On any given date I have

the dubious honor of being asked to leave some of the finer offices

in the Pentagon for just raising the devil about some of the changes

we have put forth with regard principally to policies.

I must say with regard to pay, on those, with the leadership of

Mr. Gregory, we have seen marked cooperation and support for reform of pay systems. What we have not seen is an equal amount

of energy with regard to modernization of personnel policies.

Specifically to the issue, I am unable at this time to provide you

any specific quantifiable decrease in retention. That is all the more

amazing, considering the kinds of problems that we are facing here

today. Our overall, both first term and career retention rates today

are at about 98.4 percent of goal. Our recruiting is also amazingly,

if you will, off the street, on target. I must tell you, though, that

I believe there is a potential tsunami of a problem. That is because

the intensity of the war continues.

Second, we are now in the era where this large number of soldiers we mobilized for what we are calling OIF I, approximately

72,000 soldiers has now been redeployed and is entering the window of demobilization and the period of time in which stop loss is

effective. I have done my best to try to normalize our statistics to

exclude a what I call artificial retention imposed by stop. We are

plowing brand new ground. We have never before engaged in this

level or volume of mobilization over this extended period with the

frequency and intensity and, add to that, the casualty rates that

we are enjoying. By enjoying, I mean having happen to us. Certainly none of us are enjoying them in a positive sense.

So that is part of the frustrating problem, is, in my judgment,

we are facing a potential, not crisis but problem. But as I approach

asking for certain authorities and changes in regulation and policy

as regards retention capabilities and authorities, I am often told:

Well, you don’t have a problem, General. We don’t understand why

you are asking for that if you don’t have a problem.

135

That is a mindset that has to change. We have to get ahead of

this in order to ensure that the integrity of our all volunteer force

is maintained. And so I accept very well your concern. I have no

statistics to sit here and say I need this, I need that, based on a

statistical challenge because I don’t see that. But I believe that it

is there; it is simply masked from view today, and we will know

more within the first quarter of the next fiscal year as this first cohort for OIF I has the opportunity to then either ETS, take a 20-

year inactive duty retirement, or some just exit the force.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, let me just ask one very

quick question, maybe two, for Mr. Shine.

You know, in the first group of witnesses a statement was made

that if you had been overpaid, trying to pay it back becomes almost

an impossible task. I mean, that was said twice. Now, but why, if

I am overpaid, that me trying to pay it back creates impossible

tasks? I mean, could you explain that to me? Because I heard it

twice, and I turned to staff and I said, did they say that you can’t

pay it back even when you try? And of course the answer from the

staff was yes as well. So I guess I heard that.

Mr. SHINE. Sir, the answer to your question is a very easy one:

There is no excuse for it. It never should have happened. And I

have already apologized to Major Riggins for it, because there is no

excuse for the type of customer service treatment that he received.

Once an overpayment has been identified, simply contacting the

proper government official to effect the repayment is all that

should be necessary. What happened was unconscionable and never

should have happened.

Mr. TOWNS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I yield back.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns.

Mr. Shine, I appreciate that approach. And as I said with the

first panel, I am planning on following up with those that were

part of that panel, Major Riggins being one in specific, I guess, said

does 14 months after demobilizing still have an ongoing case,

which is just somewhat disconcerting. And I appreciate your agreeing and trying to make sure it is—you know, one case at a time.

But if we track down each one of those cases, eventually we will

get them all, and that we do right by him and all of his fellow men

and women in uniform.

And that relates to one question, that in Sergeant DeLain’s testimony she talked about—and I guess they demobilized—I’m looking

for a date here—sometime last spring, if I remember correctly. I

am looking for the right timeframe. August of last year. That, as

recently as she had been last Friday contacted by a captain who

had a debt collector calling that they owed $500. How is, if there

is still an unpaid balance—and I distinguish between somebody

who was deployed, was doing what they were supposed to be doing

and just got paid wrongly versus someone who wasn’t deployed to

active duty and knew they were getting active duty pay. But that

person who was deployed, how do we treat? I mean, this reads like

there is an outside debt collection firm saying, hey, you owe us

money. How do we handle those cases in general?

Mr. SHINE. Mr. Chairman, it wasn’t specifically addressed in today’s hearing, but it was one of the items that was discussed at the

January hearing. And that is, that when an individual isn’t deterVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:38 Feb 28, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00139 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96995.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
136

mined to be in an overpaid status and has a debt, we have an obligation by law to make sure they are afforded proper due process.

And this was one of the things that we recognized was a deficiency

in some of the overpayments that had been processed. And, again,

it is one of those—when I talked about some of the safety net

issues that we have recently established, it was not in place unfortunately at the time that Sergeant DeLain’s unit demobilized. It is

in place now. We do have a procedure where we get a management

report each month that identifies individuals that are in debt, and

we then make an attempt to make sure that either through DFAS

or through the unit administrator that the individual is notified of

the debt so they have the right to due process. In some cases, these

people have now already left service, in which case we have a specific organization inside of DFAS that deals with what we call out

of service debt. At that time, they are again afforded a due process.

It is an official process where they are notified in writing, they

have the option then of either repaying the debt, providing substantiating documents to show that the debt has already been repaid. Or, another procedure, which is to apply for a waiver or remission of the indebtedness. And there is a specific adjudication

process that follows if in fact that happens.

As a matter of fact, you may recall there were some individuals

from the hearing in January who are still pursuing that adjudication process. Once an individual decides to pursue that, we suspend

the debt until complete adjudication is decided. So while I can’t

comment specifically on the individual captain with Sergeant

DeLain, I will be happy to get with her after the hearing so we can

make sure we followup on it. The normal procedure is that only in

a circumstance where we have tried to collect the debt, the individual had either chosen not to choose the waiver option or just said

I’m not going to pay it, there are cases depending on the size of

the debt. If it is not economically cost justified to pursue it, we will

end up doing a write-off. But if it is, we will sometimes turn it

over, and it will get reported against the private credit companies

as a bad debt.

Mr. PLATTS. And it comes—my understanding from what you just

said it is after they have been given every opportunity to have their

case heard, and if they believe they are not in debt, to make that

case. So that adjudication process runs its course before there is an

actual debt collection effort?

Mr. SHINE. That is exactly the way it should work. And of course,

like I said, I will followup to see if in fact we had a problem with

the individual that Sergeant DeLain referenced.

Mr. PLATTS. That would be great. Thank you. Related to that

first panel, we talked a little bit about Major Riggins and the efforts of better educating, whether it be Reserve or Guard, or in this

case Reserve. He was part of the Individual Ready Reserve. And

we saw recently over 5,000 troops in that category being called

upon. So they are not—if I understand it correctly, if they are not

really part of a specific unit, how would they be educated? He

talked about the fact that his case was unique. But it sounds like

we are going to have several thousand unique cases where they are

not necessarily a part of a unit deployment so they may not get as

detailed or lengthy of an upbriefing. How are you going to try to

137

ensure that these pay issues are addressed even for those Individual Ready Reserve members?

General HELMLY. Congressman, I will take that, if I may. First,

the current chain of command, the human resources command in

St. Louis has shown an impressive degree of sensitivity toward

these soldiers and their families and a recognition that they are not

a part of the Selected Reserve in a unit.

Second, they will go to a mobilization station. Those stations are

in the process of being identified where they will go through a soldier readiness processing, including a complete physical and a determination of their capability for active duty service, because they

are by definition in a more personally unready state not being a

part of the managed force today. That mobilization station has the

input capabilities, the counseling, and they will go through virtually, if anything, a stronger post mobilization readiness check

briefings, the information sessions, etc., than our Selected Reserve

soldiers.

And, third, I just today spoke to our USARP, Army Reserve Command sergeant major and our OCARP Command sergeant major

about promotion force, these soldiers, etc. And I OK’ed their approval, since there had been some resistance, and will begin directing tomorrow that these soldiers will be treated as an integral part.

The vast majority of these soldiers were justified against Army Reserve specific shortages in units for OIF 3. And we will make a

matter of exerted command emphasis to ensure at every turn

awards, decorations, family readiness, information, pay, etc., and

that they are treated no differently than soldiers who were already

a part of the units. We will place maximum emphasis on that. I

have told both command sergeants major my intent is to do a good

enough job that these soldiers, once demobilized, wish to remain a

part of the Selected Reserve rather than revert to the Individual

Ready Reserve.

Mr. PLATTS. That is a commendable approach, and I appreciate

that determination on your part to see that happens, and that understanding of recognition that they are in a unique circumstance

because of their status versus the Selected Reserve.

General HELMLY. Unique circumstance, but they are no less the

soldier. And we are going to treat them in every way. Certainly we

are treating them that way from the operational perspective and

the decision to mobilize them that way and send them forward. We

carry a complete responsibility to ensure we carry with that in

spirit and intent and action all of those things that we care for our

Active Duty, Reserve, or National Guard soldiers.

Mr. PLATTS. That captures the message of the full committee and

the subcommittee. These men and women are being sent into

harm’s way to defend our Nation and our citizens, and side by side

you are going to have active duty personnel, you are going to have

the reservists who have been mobilized. What we are asking of

them is going to be the same, yet historically we have treated them

differently. Again, I commend the efforts to change that mindset,

that they are not treated differently, that they are treated the

same.

A couple quick final questions and then we will wrap up, because

you have been very patient in your time here with us today and

138

I appreciate that. One is related to that treatment. In looking

through the booklet for the Guard, and this is specific to the Guard

versus Reservists, but I assume it is something similar.

The book talks about paying of bills and the ability to have automated payment. In the Guard book it talks about the fact that the

Reserve component of DJMS does not have the capability to issue

allotments to pay bills automatically. And so I guess actually it’s

telling me, that is, for Guard and Reserve there is not that ability.

Is that something you are looking at when you are talking about

trying to treat them the same? Or is it because they are mobilized

for such short periods it is harder to have such an automatic payment?

Mr. GREGORY. No, sir. As Mr. Shine said before, you know, when

the active component and reserve component versions of DJMS

were built, the reserve component was built for a weekend drill

person, and it was never expected—and I would also include that

what also was not in the reserve component system or wasn’t originally in the reserve component system was the accumulation of

leave. Forward compatible pay resolves that problem. There—

because——

Mr. PLATTS. That is 2006?

Mr. GREGORY. No, sir. March——

Mr. PLATTS. 2005.

Mr. GREGORY. Correct.

Mr. PLATTS. And that will address that?

Mr. GREGORY. Sir, it eliminates two systems and makes them

one. Making them one means it doesn’t make any difference whether you are reservist or on active.

Mr. PLATTS. And so that type thing, of automatic bill payment,

they are all going to have the same opportunity?

Mr. GREGORY. Yes, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. Great.

Mr. GREGORY. To include leave.

Mr. PLATTS. That is a good example of the positive action that

you are taking, and where we will look forward to the next spring

being as we are treating them all the same. What is the timeframe—I know that FCP is kind of that interim stage and the Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System the long term

goal. Is that something—that is the March 2006?

Mr. GREGORY. Correct, sir.

Mr. PLATTS. OK. All right. Get my dates straight, and I think I

came in on the middle of that question. That is something that I

do want to emphasize. We are definitely moving in the right direction. General, your statements very clearly—and actually all three

of you acknowledging the wrongful practices of the past and a dedicated concerted effort to correct those wrongful practices so that

they don’t repeat themselves in the future. Each of you, as you

work with your various units within the military and the Department but also as GAO, with the full committee and this subcommittee, appreciate that partnering that we are all on the same

page, trying to move forward in a positive way.

The final question I want to touch on, one of the issues that came

forward, I think it was Colonel Campbell talked about the mandatory use of credit cards. Because of the way the systems are in

139

place, it was almost a given they are going to be paying late unless

they paid with their own money. So the late payment fees and, you

know, kind of that impact on their own credit and administrative

actions being taken against the soldiers. Given that DOD, and I

think it is probably several hundred thousand credit cards out

there. That is a pretty powerful bargaining position with the credit

card companies. What effort is there to get a 45-day instead of a

30-day payment period, a waiver of late fees as long as there is

consistently made late payments because of the way the process?

What efforts of that nature have occurred or are under way?

Mr. GREGORY. Sir, I will tell you that in the beginning, because

we saw this coming, especially with the numbers we knew we had

to mobilize—and to the credit of the Bank of America, who is our

contractor, they did not apply late fees for a period of I think 6

months, nor did they consider payments delinquent. Now, I think

that period of time that the contractor—that we negotiated with

the Bank of America was for about a period of 6 months. And then

after that they said, hey, we have to go back to our business case

and our business plan. So I would have to give credit to the Bank

of America, that they did more than what a business could—should

be asked to do. And I will tell you, they were very good about that,

and they deserve credit for that.

And relative to the situation today that caused Colonel Campbell

the problem he did, I will turn that to Pat.

Mr. SHINE. And basically just sort of echoing what Mr. Gregory

said, we actually did get caught a little bit behind there. And with

the Bank of America’s help, that gave us, if you will, a cushion.

During that cushion time, there were two very significant events

that happened. One was we recognized that the number of huge

travel reimbursements that were going to be required because of

the war on terror far exceeded our capability to handle. And with

the Army’s assistance, we brought on a corps of about 250 contractors.

The second event, which actually came mostly out of General

Helmly’s organization was we activated—in addition to reservists

that actually deploy, we activated five separate finance units out

of the U.S. Army Reserve and Guard that actually came—who were

actually trained to do this kind of work, and came and augmented

that work for us. So by the time the cushion—if I can use that

term—that the Bank of America gave us had expired, we had that

turnaround time down to what we considered to be—our normal

turnaround time is to process all vouchers ready to pay within 8

business days. And I was talking to Colonel Campbell at one of the

breaks there, we hit that 90 percent of the time. And obviously on

the 10 percent we don’t, our customers tell us—and rightfully so—

you all didn’t hit the mark. But I think at 90 percent, with the volume we are dealing with, we are literally talking hundreds of thousands of vouchers now per month. I think it has been a real partnership between the Army and DFAS to try to get people paid so

that when their credit card bill is due they have the money in their

hand with which to make the payments.

Mr. PLATTS. Great news. I appreciate that effort. And I am glad

you had that 6-month cushion. As we are going forward in a posiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:38 Feb 28, 2005 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00143 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96995.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
140

tive way, you won’t need it in the future because of the system

being better and better.

Mr. Towns, did you have any other questions?

Mr. TOWNS. No. I would just like to thank the witnesses, Mr.

Chairman, and to say that, you know, as we look at this I am

thinking about the many soldiers whose credit has been really

messed up as a result of this, and that creates a problem for them,

you know, in terms of life, going on to purchase whatever it is, because once that is on your record it takes a certain amount of time

to get it off even though it was not really their fault for it to be

on there. So I think this is a very serious issue, and I appreciate

the fact that you are addressing it in a very serious fashion, that

you are now prepared to give it a date certain that you think that

you will be able to correct the most of this. I think that is very encouraging.

So I want to thank all three of you for your testimony.

On that note, I yield back, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Towns.

I want to thank each of you again for participating today and for

your efforts day in and day out on behalf of our Nation, and especially our men and women in uniform. As I said to the first panel

and General Helmly, you know, what I do pales in comparison to

you and all who are wearing the uniform. You set the example for

all of us Americans and what it means to give back to one’s country. So I thank you for your service. I am not sure, Mr. Gregory,

Mr. Shine, if you either have prior military service. You both do?

My thanks to each of you as well. It is something that I feel in my

heart, I hope if the good that came from the terrible date of September 11th was a better appreciation of those who wear the uniform and a better expression of that appreciation day in and day

out. So I personally thank you. And I would tell you that your efforts are truly critically important, not just in the sense of doing

right by the men and women in uniform, from a general standpoint

that is the right thing to do, but from a mission performance. Having had the privilege of visiting troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, it has been an honor to go out in the field to convey my thanks

personally. A common—two common messages I hear or see. One

is just a pride of service. We are so blessed as a nation by those

serving who are in harm’s way and proud to wear the uniform and

to be serving their Nation.

The second, is, if you ask soldiers what they worry about, it is

to take care of family at home. I think it came through loud and

clear that the better we do by the troops and their families, the

more they can focus on their mission and do their job and do it so

well as they always do, and not have the stress of any distraction,

especially financial stress.

Your work is so important to each of those individuals and to our

Nation’s security overall. I appreciate your efforts. I am very glad

we are here where we are today versus where we were January at

the full committee hearing and how the lessons from the Guard

study and now the Reserve study are being built upon and we are

learning what is working and what is not and moving forward in

a positive way. That is a great message for those men and women

in uniform.

141

So, again, my thanks. We will continue to work with you, and I

want to thank the staff on both sides of the committee who are

working with members of your staff and GAO, and that partnership continues. At the end of the day we just simply do right by

those serving our Nation in uniform. We will keep the record open

for 2 weeks for any additional submissions. This hearing stands adjourned. Thank you.

[Whereupon, at 6:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

Æ