Lance Cpl. Gabriel Fleitas might be squeezed out of $27,000. And if he drove the car he was hoping to pay off with some of that cash just 50 minutes north of where he's stationed at Quantico, Virginia, he'd find the culprit: Congress.
Back in July, Fleitas made the decision that countless Marines before him have made. He decided to reenlist. While it certainly wasn't his only reason, the lump-sum bonus that came with the decision is equivalent to a significant chunk of his annual base pay, and it made dreams of starting a family, saving for a home, or building a savings account more tangible.
"Having $27,000 right now -- it's not going to make me a millionaire overnight," Fleitas told Military.com in a phone interview Thursday. "But it could genuinely change my life if I play my cards right."
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Now, Fleitas is one of 933 Marines whose reenlistment bonuses are at risk of not being paid out by the Marine Corps because Congress cannot agree to pass a budget on time, instead relying on a short-term band-aid called a continuing resolution, which restricts the federal government to spending limits from the previous year for an unpredictable period of time.
It's not the first time the Marine Corps has been kneecapped by political dysfunction. Last year, the service lost 2,500 Marines who wanted to reenlist but decided not to because they couldn't get their bonuses paid out on time. And now, with nearly a thousand Marines in danger of the same fate -- and thousands more who cannot execute duty station moves because the money to pay for them is not there, top Marine leaders are sounding the alarm.
"Because you have that limited amount of cash, it affects your day-to-day operations," Lt. Gen. James Adams III, the deputy commandant for programs and resources, told Military.com in an interview Wednesday. "We are stressed all the time, and we're trying to balance the checkbook ... [but] we're living paycheck to paycheck" because of the continuing resolution.
It is no secret that the Pentagon's budget is astronomically vast. Before the budget goes to Congress, the services compile lists of line-item amounts of money they need to fund operations throughout the next fiscal year and send them to the president: building and refurbishing barracks, modernizing equipment, and paying its troops, for example.
If approved by Congress during a normal budget cycle, those billions of dollars allocated for the Defense Department are distributed throughout the services into different accounts. By law, the services are required to use that money for the programs they are appropriated for, meaning the Marine Corps can't take millions away from its Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program and put it toward bonuses without special approval from Congress.
Under a continuing resolution, the services are forced to use -- oftentimes in only a portioned amount -- the money they were approved for during the previous year, effectively hampering the ability to move forward with programs requested to meet current or future requirements.
Or to move Marines and pay their bonuses.
Adams said that the concerns the service is raising do not mean the Corps is asking for more taxpayer money, but rather a "timely, predictable, sufficient budget" as the "most effective way of curtailing all these problems."
"It's basically trying to execute today's mission with yesterday's budget -- in only a small portion of yesterday's budget," he said.
Keeping Valuable Marines
The pressure to keep Marines like Fleitas in the Corps is immense.
As battlefields changed, the private sector became more financially competitive and the Marine Corps looked to modernize, the institution realized that one of its critical strengths -- and worrisome vulnerabilities -- was the ability to keep trained and talented Marines in its ranks.
"Once that Marine decides not to reenlist, you can't get them back. They're gone, for the most part," Lt. Gen. Michael Borgschulte, the service's deputy commandant of manpower and reserve affairs, told Military.com. "A weapon system, you can delay a bit. But once that Marine goes over the side, it's very difficult to get them back."
He said that the Marine Corps realized years ago that it could retain more Marines by simply asking them what would keep them in the fleet. Borgschulte recalled a day in theater when he was addressing a crowd of Marines about reenlisting. He asked, "OK, what Marines have reenlisted" and if not, "What would it take to reenlist you?"
A Marine timidly raised his hand requesting to go to Okinawa, Japan. They cut his orders right there, and suddenly a line formed of Marines who were on the fence about staying in and had requests.
Some were out of the question (one wanted to be a veterinarian, but the Corps doesn't have any). But "if we can do it, let's do it," Borgschulte said. And the challenge of keeping those Marines in started to become easier when leaders gave them more "agency" in the decision, he said.
Some Marines' decisions are bolstered by money. In October, the Marine Corps announced a slew of retention bonuses, a continuation of an effort to prioritize certain jobs to meet the needs of a future battlefield. Fleitas, an air traffic control navigational aids technician, was in a pool of critical jobs that also included cyber, signal and influence operations Marines, among others, who qualified for tens of thousands of dollars in cash if they decided to stay in the service.
Simultaneously, Congress passed a continuing resolution Sept. 25, one that expires Dec. 20, in order to avoid a government shutdown. That gave the Marine Corps less than three months of limited budget to make good on its bonus promises, and now -- with another continuing resolution being floated inside the Beltway -- Marines like Fleitas, whose contract ends in February, don't know if the money will come through.
"It's not crushing me, but it's putting pressure on me," Fleitas said, adding that he's already started to make plans outside of the Corps, given the uncertainty. "I'm not sure what it's going to be like when February comes around or what's going to happen if I do end up getting the reenlistment [bonus] back."
Bonuses are certainly not the only thing that keep a Marine in the fleet. Military.com previously reported that just over half of first-term Marines reenlisted without a bonus. There are other incentives that can come along with that deal, including duty station preference. And for some, the stability of the Marine Corps job -- and the people they work with -- in an uncertain employment market are considerations. But the bonus is often a deciding factor.
If the Corps cannot fulfill its end of the reenlistment bargain, the Marine has no obligation to stay in. And when Marines like Fleitas are staring down the end of their contract in a short time, other opportunities become more clear when the promises the Corps made don't come through.
When asked whether he would stay in without the bonus, Fleitas said, "I don't believe I would. The bonus was a big push. It's like a scale. The bonus was a lot of weight on the Marine Corps side of the scale."
Duty Station Moves Take a Hit
The pool of money affected by the continuing resolution is the Marine Corps' largest. The Manpower and Personnel Appropriation, an account that constitutes more than half of the service's total budget, funds Marines' base pay, housing allowances, food subsidies, uniforms, chow halls and other personnel-based programs. Just over $200 million was set aside for bonuses in fiscal 2024.
While some of those funds are earmarked as discretionary, meaning they can be moved around, in reality they really can't, Marine Corps leaders said. The Corps has to pay its troops their salary the 1st and 15th of every month, it has to house them and it has to feed them. That leaves only a handful of "levers" leaders can pull to ensure other necessities are fulfilled amid a constrained budget.
The first casualty was the bonuses. The other was permanent change of station, or PCS, moves. Nearly 3,000 Marines and their families are currently unable to move to their next duty station because the Marine Corps cannot pay for it -- and the resulting complications are alarming.
"Let's say you're going to move from Quantico, Virginia, to Camp Pendleton, California, and you expect that's going to happen this year," Borgschulte said. "You're telling your family, and maybe your spouse has a job and they're thinking of how they would change that job. ... Now, you're looking at housing really hard in California. Now, you're looking at where you're going to put your kids in school."
Will base housing have a spot for you? If you have young children, will the child development center have room for them when you don't know when you'll get there?
"All these stressors, you're just adding unpredictability," Borgschulte said. The inability of a Marine to move also opens a gap on the books of the receiving unit, creating a reverberating effect that could leave some units short of a potentially critical billet.
The stability is a huge part of reenlisting, too, the general added. If the Marine Corps can't guarantee when a service member can move, it signals added volatility in a job that can already be unpredictable.
While "all the stress is going on," Borgschulte said, Marines may decide to leave for more stable jobs.
"'I won't be a Marine, which makes me sad, but we'll have more stability,'" he said of Marines' thinking. "So, they might choose that. That's what I fear, and that might be a Marine that has really high levels of skills that we need, and it might take me five years, might take me 10 years, to build that Marine again."
To ease some of that pressure, Borgschulte said the Marine Corps started cutting those thousands of waiting Marines "shell" orders. There is no line of accounting attached to them, meaning that in reality the Marines still cannot move on them because there is no money available to pay for things like movers or gas, critical assets that are also being pummeled by inflation.
But having that paper allows a Marine to start reserving those spots at their next duty station -- whenever they may get there -- because housing and child development centers require that paperwork to start the process. Still, it's not ideal, and those orders can easily become defunct if the money doesn't come to back them up.
"They're draft orders only to get them set up in those things, but there's no movement actions," Borgschulte said. "They won't be reimbursed. They actually can't move on those even if they wanted to."
As the continuing resolutions are likely to continue -- and a base pay increase of 4.5% will start Jan. 1, meaning more money in an already limited budget will get more difficult to manage -- the service is nervously eyeing other levers, like tuition assistance, it may have to cut to ensure it can pay for salaries and other must-haves.
"That's not a path we would want to go down," Borgschulte said. "But that's just how bad it is, that's how impactful the [continuing resolution] is. There's just nowhere else to get funds."
Not Just About Weapons Systems
The military raising concerns to Congress about continuing resolutions is not new. As recently as September, military leaders came out in force explaining how the stifling budget process affects the force. But oftentimes, those conversations center around strategic assets or modernization.
Adams estimated that, out of the last 15 years of operations, the Marine Corps has been under a continuing resolution for a cumulative five years.
"When we discuss the challenges with [continuing resolutions], we often highlight the delay in a weapon system or program," Borgschulte said. "But the Corps' critical strength is our people, and when a [continuing resolution] restricts us from retaining our talent, we can't get them back, so it is more catastrophic than delaying a program or weapon system."
It's notable that some of those leaders are getting into the weeds about how it affects personnel, and it comes at a time when the recruiting and retention environment has been broadly difficult.
That is also why the continuing resolutions are particularly frustrating. The Marine Corps was proving successful amid the yearslong recruiting crisis in that it was the only branch to consistently make its goal while others struggled. So the loss of thousands of Marines stings even more now.
In part, the bonuses and other incentives were working, too. In September, the service announced that it had achieved a "historic" reenlistment year, meeting 114% of its goal. And earlier this year, it became the first U.S. military branch in recorded history to pass its financial audit, accounting for the ".556 bullets that are in the armory to the F-35 on the flight line and everywhere in between," Adams said, signaling to taxpayers and Congress that the Marine Corps is a responsible arbiter of funding.
"If my message is 'hold on, eventually the bill will come,' that's my message," Adams said. "I know that doesn't work well with every Marine, but if they're a person who was prevented from being reenlisted or prevented from moving, hopefully now they understand why and that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.
"But," he added, "it really depends on getting out of a [continuing resolution] and into a real enacted budget."
Editor's note: This story has been updated to correct the comparison between Fleitas' bonus and annual base pay.
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