VA Loan Updates

Under the command of an Army general, U.S. troops carrying tear gas and rifles were sent to rout the protesters and clear their camps. One member of the general’s staff wasn’t at all keen on the idea; and the president of the United States was reluctant to sanction the action, as well. But, the general prevailed, convincing in his argument that the group holed up on the swampy Anacostia Flats across from the nation’s capital represented a communist attempt to overthrow the government.

The year was 1932. The Army general was George S. Patton. The staff member was Dwight D. Eisenhower and the U.S. president was Herbert H. Hoover. The “communist” insurgents were an assemblage of about 17,000 World War I veterans, their families and affiliate groups, seeking immediate cash payment of Services Certificates that had been granted to the veterans eight years previously by the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924, but which could not be redeemed until 1945.

Hard to believe that the Services Readjustment Act of 1944, commonly known as the GI Bill of Rights, germinated in the soil of controversy and confrontation that began with the veterans of the Great War during the Great Depression. But that was the case.

Last revamped in 1984 by former Mississippi Congressman Gillespie V. “Sonny” Montgomery, the GI bill has since been known as the Montgomery GI Bill and upholds the original bill’s legacy in the form of providing VA home loan guaranty and education benefits for the most recent generation of combat veterans.

Importantly, the revamping continues — this time proffered by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett along with Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), who recently introduced bipartisan, bicameral legislation that would allow military service personnel to transfer their unused GI Bill education benefits to their spouses or children.

As can be imagined, there are many nuances involved in creating what is being called a “modern Montgomery GI Bill.” We don’t pretend to know them. But, we have learned enough from and about our own generation of combat veterans and the sacrifices they have made to state unequivocally that they — and their families — are worth and worthy of the educational benefits afforded veterans by the GI Bill.

What President Franklin D. Roosevelt observed when he signed the original GI Bill on June 22, 1944, still stands: Special benefits are due to the members of our armed forces, for they “have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us.”

To which we add: And so have their families.

Found here.

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