Nuthin’.
blackdog: Just for sheer entertainment–and the very real prospect that it’ll make that wall of text you’ve been constructing more intelligble–how about hitting the enter a key a couple of times to create [del]windows[/del] paragraphs in that wall?
For FSA (which I personally consider discriminatory, but that’s another issue), the law permits (for most of my career, at least) that allowance to be initiated (the servicing personnel/finance office submits the paperwork the day of deployment) for the deployed members of the unit on the first day of the deployment if it is known in advance that the unit will be on a qualified deployment for longer than 30 days. The allowance itself will not “kick in” until the 30th day of deployment and will be reflected in the payment made to the member on the 30th day (if payday) or the first payday after (if the 30th day is not a payday).
There was also the issue where members receiving BAS (Basic Allowance for Subsistence) were shocked when they deployed for the first Gulf War (I think it was the 1st one) and their BAS stopped. Apparently, a great many of them were under the impression that BAS was for the family, not for the member. IIRC, legislation went through to permit them to continue to receive that.
Now here are some possible reasons for a deployed member to not receive all or most of a paycheck on deployment (there are other reasons, of course, but these will do to give a rough idea):
[ol][li]Deployment date is past the cutoff day for the pay action generating allowances connected with deployment.[/li][li]Deployment date is past the cutoff date for the corrective pay action to prevent overpayment due to receiving allowances he would have received if not deployed, but is no longer authorized to receive if deployed. (Kind of a “double whammy,” if yu will.)[/li][li]Deployment date is before the cutoff date for other corrective pay actions for other overpayments but after the cutoff date for the pay actions generating allowances connected with deployment.[/li][li]Dual military couples are mistakenly both credited with allowance(s) which, by law, only one member of the couple may receive and that is corrected.[/ol][/li]
Take a wild guess which one applies to the situation of deploying the very day before payday. Of course you’re not going to get the full allowances the very next day. But the allowances are paid on the following payment after that one and reflect the initial eligibility date.
FTR: I don’t think blackdog’s account is accurate. I’m not going to say he’s not telling the truth. I’m saying he either misrembers or misunderstands what was involved.
Sometimes I have privates who are not paid for all of basic training. I wonder if Obama did that, too.
I think blackdog’s issue, if accurate, was caused at his unit level. Someone didn’t process the paperwork properly or timely. It was not an issue of the federal budget.
I think blackdog’s issue is he doesn’t understand a calendar.
Regarding not processing the paperwork in a timely manner, I’ll never forget the time one guy in my division decided to not process the ship’s company’s FSA paperwork until the 30th day out. His excuse was, “Well, we could’ve been sent back to homeport before we hit a month away.” This was on a regularly-scheduled 6-month deployment.
Glad I wasn’t his supervisor when he pulled that stunt. As it is, I found out about it the day before the payday everyone qualified was supposed to get it. Back then, the FSA wasn’t the large amount it is now, but it was still money people were counting on.
That dumbass was one of the guys qualified to get the FSA too!