IOU

100k War Vets Yet to Get Stop-Loss Pay

Less than 20 percent of those eligible have received money.

More than 100,000 servicemen and women, after being forced to extend their military tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, never received thousands of dollars that the Pentagon owes them—and Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) wants to know why. Lautenberg—who pushed a bill, passed in October 2009, that requires the Pentagon to provide extra compensation to stop-lossed service members—wrote to the Pentagon on Tuesday to see what, if anything, the U.S. military has done to alert veterans that they are eligible for the stop-loss payments. According to Department of Defense figures, less than 20 percent of those eligible have received pay—about $3,000 to $4,000 per veteran on average. “It’s been difficult to track many of these individuals down,” Major Roy Whitley, project manager for the Army’s stop-loss pay program, told ABC News. “We’re talking about a group of young individuals who are finished with their military service and who tend to move around a lot.”