VA Loan Updates

Critics say legislation would cost $500,000,000 over five years.

WASHINGTON — Fresno resident Rufus Hernandez and his fellow Merchant Marine veterans from World War II would receive $1,000 a month tax-free under a bill passed by the House on Monday.

Hernandez thinks it’s only fair, considering the risks merchant mariners took for their country. The Bush administration and some veterans groups, though, are skeptical of the package that could cost taxpayers nearly half-a-billion dollars over the next five years.

“It’s long overdue, and there are not many of us left,” Hernandez said Monday.

Hernandez is now 80, long retired from the restaurant business. Several lifetimes ago, as a 17-year-old Sanger High School student, he went off to sea and served on a convoy supporting the invasion of Okinawa. All told, he served two years and on three different wartime ships.

He is one of about 10,000 surviving World War II maritime service veterans who would benefit from the House bill. Hernandez noted these are men like Mariposa resident Richard Costa, who signed up at the age 15, and Fresno resident Jack Splivalo, who trained as an officer at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.

“We took the same oath as the armed services,” said Hernandez, president of the Central California chapter of the American Merchant Marine Veterans. “We took the same training.”

They faced the same risks, or worse.

With its rapidly built Liberty and Victory ships, the Merchant Marine transported much of the U.S. equipment and material used in World War II. By some counts, an estimated 8,300 merchant mariners died at sea and another 12,000 were wounded.

But the men were also civilians, exempt from the draft. They did not wear formal uniforms, they could quit when a mission ended and they were not bound by military justice. As union members, they drew higher pay than their Navy counterparts.

“They’re not veterans,” Dennis Cullinan, legislative director for the Veterans of Foreign Wars, insisted Monday. “We have real heartburn with the idea that we’re going to given them this $1,000 a month gratuity…it’s not equitable.”

After World War II, the men of the U.S. Merchant Marine were denied veterans privileges, including the education reimbursements provided through the G.I. Bill of Rights.

Lobbied heavily, the Reagan administration eventually designated the merchant seamen as veterans in 1988. Since then, Congress has repeatedly considered various other efforts to further recognize the wartime Merchant Marine.

“It’s a group of people who helped us win the war, and were never given any of the benefits from that,” said Rep. Bob Filner, D-Chula Vista.

Filner chairs the House Veterans Affairs Committee, and has been pushing the legislation for several years. Last year, though it was backed by numerous GOP members like Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, Republican leaders blocked the measure from getting a House vote.

The Democratic takeover of Congress freed up the bill, but did not eliminate opposition. Providing an additional $1,000 a month payment will amount to a “special privilege that is not available to other veterans,” Department of Veterans Affairs official Bradley Mayes testified earlier this year.

The bill will cost $120 million next year and $485 million over five years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“We do…have serious concerns about the cost of this bill and how it would impair (the Department of Veterans Affairs’) ability to provide the benefits it already manages,” Kimo Hollingsworth, national legislative director of American Veterans (AMVETS), testified earlier this year.

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