Death Gratuities News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Him. >> he may want that year in jail. >> all right. steve, thanks so much. and, now it's time to reveal the results of tonight's insta poll. we asked what should happen to secretary hagel who refused the death benefits to soldiers killed in action? an overwhelming majority of you believe he should be sent out on his keister. patricia tweets he should be fired. all the nasty lawyers who thought it was a good idea to withhold death gratuities, fire them, too. some of you got creative. sue ann writes, drop him in any arab country. emily writes -- put his butt on the front line and let him be a t...

President obama could have written an executive order the second he learned of this and it never would have come to any of this. am i wrong? >> there's an interesting question, bill, about whether the decision, the legal decision that was made that said that the -- they couldn't legally pay these benefit because good faith decision or whether it was possibly a corrupt decision. there's a sequence of events that's worth noting here. back on october 27th, the president's comptroller mr. hale said if we didn't have it, a moing the things that would be halted would be these death gratuities, dealt...

>> we will not stand for this outrage. >> for shame. >> some of those voices belong to lawmakers who opposed the moves that led to a government shutdown, some are from people that put us on the path we're on. keeping them honest, they were warned specifically this would happen. today boehner said our staff did not receive communication from the department of defense on this top pick until after we passed the bill. speaker boehner and any lawmaker could know. on september 27th the pentagon sent a memo on who gets hurt in a shutdown. one item reading quote, we won't be able to pay some billing d...

Emergency death benefits because of the government shutdown. the outrage spread to the white house. wednesday president obama told doreen gentzler of nbc's wrc. >> when i heard this story i told the. department of defense we should able to get that fixed. >> at a press conference in late september several days before the shutdown the pentagon warned this would happen. >> we would be required to do some other pad things to our people. we couldn't immediately pay death gratuities. >> wednesday as the remains of four service members killed in afghanistan last weekend arrived at dover air force ba...

Do some other bad things to our people. just some examples, we couldn't immediately pay death gratuities to those who die on active duty during the lapse. >> reporter: that was pentagon comptroller robert heal three days before the shutdown. robert heal warned everyone on the friday that the death benefit payments for military service families would be a problem if there was a shutdown. clearly politicians decided what they wanted to hear and now there is a debate how to interpret the pay our military act which some lawmakers thought dealt with these issues. jenna? jenna: jennifer, thank you. ...