House passes bill to change Guard paid leave policy

The House passed a bill Tuesday evening that would grandfather in 49,000 National Guard members to receive more paid leave benefits after the Pentagon changed them last year.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), passed on a voice vote. The bill would undo a Defense Department policy that reduced the amount of paid leave received by National Guard members who had deployed before the policy went into effect last October.

Kline got involved in the issue because a group of 2,000 Minnesota Guard members were affected by the change. He said some of those members could lose up to 27 days of paid leave under the policy change.

The Pentagon established the post-deployment leave program in 2007 to give Guard members extra leave if they had more than 12 months' worth of deployments. In October, the Pentagon reduced the amount of extra time from four days per month to one to two days.

Kline has argued that the policy is fine, but it should not count for those who were deployed before the rule change went into effect. 

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