Deadline nears for LI vets' stop-loss bonus

Time is running out for hundreds of Long Island military personnel who may be eligible for one-time bonuses averaging $3,700 for being forced to remain on active duty beyond their scheduled discharge date.

Congress authorized the payments in 2009, after veterans groups asserted the Pentagon's "stop loss" policy of keeping troops in uniform beyond the end of their enlistments amounted to a "backdoor draft." Stop loss was invoked most recently in 2001 as the Bush administration ramped up for war - first in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Under the authorization, military personnel are entitled $500 for every month they are detained by stop loss. According to a Pentagon spokeswoman Tuesday, the average claim has been $3,800.

Last month, as the number of bonus applications surged prior to a Dec. 21 deadline, Congress extended the date until March 4.

Although the government has paid out $277 million to 74,000 claimants so far, an estimated 71,000 veterans nationwide have not collected the bonus, according to Pentagon spokeswoman Eileen Lainez.

If the rate of unreceived benefits nationwide is mirrored on Long Island, more than 650 veterans living here are still owed the payments. The average payment roughly equals the outstanding credit card balance of the average adult American.

Lainez said the Defense Department has used direct mailings, public service announcements, Facebook appeals and other measures to try to contact the estimated 145,000 eligible service members and veterans, or beneficiaries of troops killed while on stop loss.

But because many veterans are young people who may have moved from the address of their enlistment, finding them has been a challenge, Lainez said.

A Pentagon website - defense.gov/stoploss - has information about applying.

The benefits are available to honorably discharged service members or veterans whose enlistments were involuntarily extended between Sept. 11, 2001, and Sept. 30, 2009.

In September 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that the military would resume the use of "stop loss" authority to boost troop readiness in the face of the war on terror.

Two years ago, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped to eliminate the use of stop loss by early this year.

As of October, the most recent update available, there were 2,500 U.S. Army personnel still caught up in stop loss, Lainez said Tuesday.