VA Loan Updates

At a time when the all-volunteer military of the United States is facing greater challenges both at war and at home, a battle is brewing in Washington over whether the government has a moral obligation to further subsidize the educations of those men and women returning to civilian status.

That battle is starting to heat up at college campuses across the country.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., said he adamantly believes the government has a greater obligation to help veterans who served after Sept. 11, 2001. Webb, along with Sens. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J. and Chuck Hagel R-Neb., authored the Post 9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act, which aims to modernize the GI Bill.

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Any way you cut it, Kyle Williams is a success story. He did two tours in Iraq and came back in one piece.

Well, sort of. A mortar attack that threw him into a wall ended his second tour a little early. He had to have surgery to his shoulder and the bottom half of his face. All in all, he looks pretty good.

And now he’s taking advantage of his veteran’s benefits to get an education.

Well, sort of. Last fall, Williams was finishing up at Sierra College and preparing to transfer to UC Davis when SN&R spoke to him about his activities as president of the Sierra College Veterans Club. He’d helped to organize The Road Home: From Combat to College and Beyond, an event to provide information and assistance for veterans who wanted to make use of their educational benefits.

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California campuses deal with factors keeping veterans away. 

Why aren’t more former GI Joes going to college?

That’s the question being asked these days in California, where state officials estimate only 14,000 veterans are using their Montgomery GI Bill benefits to go to college.

Although nearly all new recruits sign up for the bill and pay $1,200 from their paychecks toward their future benefits, only a fraction of them ultimately receive degrees, according to state and national figures.

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When he signed the G.I. Bill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared it “gives emphatic notice to the men and women in our armed forces that the American people do not intend to let them down.” Today, we have the opportunity to send that same notice to the over 12,000 brave Tennesseans that have risked their lives for our country in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The General Assembly is currently considering the Helping Heroes Act. This legislation, sponsored by the House and Senate Democratic Caucuses, uses funds from the Tennessee Education Lottery to create a grant program for Tennessee veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The program will provide these veterans with $1,000 per semester for full-time attendance at approved state colleges and universities and will supplement benefits they receive from the G.I. Bill. In effect, the Helping Heroes Act makes a public college education virtually free for these veterans.

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Sen. John Warner Thursday endorsed a proposal to revamp the GI bill to make the costs of attending private colleges and universities more affordable for veterans.

Private school tuition is “beyond the reach of the American GI stepping out of uniform, unless we make this change,” said Warner, a Virginia Republican, at a news conference.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., reintroduced a bill Thursday that would modernize the veterans’ education plan. The latest version strips out benefits that would have covered room and board costs and adds federal funding to match contributions private schools make towards veterans’ tuition.

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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is expanding eligibility for education benefits to National Guard members and reservists serving multiple deployments.

They previously had to serve two years on active duty without a break to qualify for the maximum education benefit.

Now those who serve three years on active duty, regardless of breaks in service, will be eligible for maximum benefits.

Also, benefits will be available for 10 years following active duty to members who complete their service.

The top payment under the Reserve Education Assistance Program is $880.80 a month.

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Legislation led by Senators Webb, Hagel, Lautenberg and Warner will expand educational opportunities for veterans. 

Arguing that “soldiers who share the same foxhole for the same length of time should get the same benefit,” U.S. Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) announced his support today for the “Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act” (S.22).

Reintroduced late last week, the legislation commonly referred to as the “21st Century GI Bill” will provide service members who have served since September 11th, 2001 with improved educational benefits similar to those provided to World War II-era veterans.

As Wyden noted the legislation will provide Oregon members of the National Guard and Reserves who have been deployed overseas with the same educational benefits enjoyed by active duty service members.

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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.

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You may have heard military advertisements offering college tuition as an inducement for young people to sign up. A Vermont man who fought in Iraq now claims that a military recruiter misled him about those education benefits.

Drew Cameron is 26 years old and finishing his last semester toward an undergraduate degree at the University of Vermont. Some, but not all, of his tuition is covered by the G.I. Bill, augmented by a cash bonus program. That’s hardly enough, he says, especially when he believed the recruiter who signed him up for the Army.

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Tammy Acosta served her country for nearly seven years in the Army, working as a signal intelligence analyst in the U.S. and abroad in Germany and Bosnia. Now she’s taking advantage of GI Bill benefits she earned to get a master’s degree in business administration from Troy University.

Acosta is among the growing ranks of veterans, including veterans of the recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, taking advantage of the benefits they earned to complete their college education. Nearly 22 million veterans and dependents have used the GI Bill to pay for college since it was signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1944. In recent years, about 300,000 veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan have used the GI Bill, according to the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. Troy University is seeing an influx of veterans using the bill to attend college.

Alex McHahan, assistant director of financial aid and veterans affairs, said the number of veterans and eligible dependents attending college on the GI bill has increased by 25 percent over the past five years. (Spouses or children of military personnel killed or completely disabled as a result of their service are usually eligible for education assistance under the GI Bill.)

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