House panel poised to OK stop-loss payments - Army News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Army Times

House panel poised to OK stop-loss payments

The House Appropriations Committee is poised to approve a retroactive $500 monthly allowance for troops whose military service was extended by stop-loss orders.

Up to 120,000 people would receive a payment for each month that their separation or retirement was delayed by stop-loss orders since October 2001, according to congressional sources working on the 2009 defense appropriations bill.

Most of the people affected are in the active Army, Army National Guard and Army Reserve, although the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps also used stop-loss for brief periods from 2001 to 2003 in the early days of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

On average, those affected by stop-loss would receive seven months of payments, sources said, with about half in the reserve components. Although the allowance would apply to all of the services, sources said the Army is the only service with people who would qualify.

The stop-loss allowance is being added to the defense funding bill as a result of the efforts of a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., who have argued that the service members whose lives have been disrupted by extended military service should be compensated for the sacrifice.

Reps. Betty Sutton, D-Ohio, and Walter Jones, R-N.C., approached the defense appropriations subcommittee chairman, Rep. John P. Murtha, D-Pa., asking for help in getting a stop-loss allowance funded, according to congressional aides involved in the discussions.

Murtha, who has been pushing legislation to limit the length and frequency of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, was sympathetic to their pleas and put their legislation into the defense funding bill, although he scaled back on the original proposed monthly payment.

Lautenberg has called for a $1,500 monthly stop-loss allowance, but the defense funding bill will include only a $500 payment. There is a chance that could be increased if additional funding can be found, sources said.

Because the average stop-loss order has lasted 6½ months and the full monthly payment would be received for serving as little as one day of a month, those affected by stop-loss could expect to receive an average of $3,500 in a lump-sum payment, sources said.

Sources said they expect that the payments would go to both service members still in uniform and those who were stop-lossed but have since left the military.

Aides who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the subcommittee faced a choice between a bigger allowance paid only to those affected by future stop-loss orders or a smaller allowance that would also apply retroactively to anyone affected by stop-loss since October 2001, when the policy was first used. Lawmakers opted for a smaller, retroactive allowance, deciding that it would not be fair to exclude people who already served extended time.

At a July 10 press conference about the Lautenberg and Sutton legislation, Frank Yoakum of the Enlisted Association of the National Guard said paying people whose lives are unexpectedly disrupted by extended military service is “appropriate and necessary” because service members and their families have suffered.

Colby Buzzell, an Army Reserve member and veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom who appeared at the same news conference said stop-loss “is a beautiful way to destroy troop moral and lower military recruitment and retention.”

“I have seen the effects of involuntarily extending soldiers’ service and I feel that the stop-loss compensation act is the least we can do to support our troops, both those currently serving, as well as those who already have sacrificed for our country,” Buzzell said.