Costs to Reenlist Troops Soar, Audit Finds

A military program that encourages soldiers with special skills to reenlist has more than tripled in cost and gone far over budget, congressional auditors said Monday.

The cost of the Selective Re-Enlistment Bonus program has soared over five years -- to $789 million this year from $235 million in 1997 -- in part because the services aren’t sticking to their own guidelines, the General Accounting Office said.

In response, the Defense Department said the increases followed years when the Pentagon was intentionally cutting jobs and reducing spending on bonuses. The increases reflect the difficulty of retaining skilled workers in the strong economy of the late 1990s. The department also rejected the GAO’s claim that it is not adequately overseeing the program.

Congress created the program in 1974 to help the Defense Department retain soldiers in specialized areas, such as medical professionals or air traffic controllers. The bonuses are based on the specialty, the soldier’s monthly pay and years of experience. They range from a few thousand dollars to $60,000.

Almost 59,000 service members received the bonus in 2001, the last year for which figures were available. That compared with 23,000 in 1997.

The GAO report said the Navy and Air Force failed to use their own criteria for bonuses, and have increased the number of specialties that qualified for bonuses. The Army had no specific criteria. The Marine Corps generally followed its criteria, the report said.

As a result, the Army, Navy and Air Force didn’t stay within their budgets, spending $240 million more than Congress had appropriated from 1997 to 2001, the GAO said.

In the Pentagon’s response, Charles Abell, assistant secretary of Defense for force management policy, said the increased spending isn’t surprising considering that spending on the bonuses fell 40% from 1990 to 1998.