WASHINGTON - More than 2,500 Minnesota National Guard soldiers who are owed a total of $10 million in overtime pay for their deployment in Iraq three years ago are still being told the check's in the mail.

Now members of the Minnesota congressional delegation are pressing the Pentagon to make good on the long-overdue checks to the state's famed 34th (Red Bull) Infantry Division, which served in Iraq longer than any other U.S. military unit.

Confronting Defense Secretary Robert Gates in an Armed Services Committee hearing Wednesday, Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., thundered: "My question is when can these soldiers expect to receive these payments?"

The response, which came from Under Secretary Robert Hale: "I'll take that for the record."

Kline, a retired Marine colonel, translated Hale's answer in an interview afterwards: "We got no answer in terms of a date or a time."

"It's frustrating as heck," said Rep. Tim Walz, D-Minn., a former National Guardsman, who attended the hearing. "There's no doubt they have drug their feet bureaucratically on this."

What Kline and Walz did get, however, was a promise to get an answer within weeks, which they think will resolve the pay issue within months.

"The important thing is they know we're watching, and they're now on the record, in front of cameras, so they have to do something," Kline said.

That would be good news to Red Bull tank commander Jason Malley. The U.S. government owes him $4,400 in overtime pay for a deployment that was extended to 23 months during the 2007 Iraq surge ordered by former President George W. Bush.

Malley, a 37-year-old database administrator from Crystal, considers himself one of the lucky ones. His employer held his job for him.

As many as a third of the 34th's soldiers weren't so lucky; their unemployment rate is more than four times the state average.