VA Loan Updates

After serving in the Navy in World War II, Marylander Charles Schelberg was able to attend Washington College in Chestertown, Md., thanks to the GI Bill. It covered all his costs.

Schelberg, who hailed from a working-class family of Chesapeake Bay watermen, was the first in his family to attend college and earned an economics degree that led to a successful career in community banking.

There were millions of Charles Schelbergs after World War II, and the individual success of each one fed the cumulative success of a nation that shrugged off the economic malaise of the Great Depression and stoked the economic engines of the world’s most vibrant economy.

When today’s military veterans return home from their nightmarish tours of combat duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, many nurture dreams of earning a college degree, just as many of their grandparents did after serving in World War II.

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INTERVIEW. In his office, Paul Rieckhoff has a photo of his old Army platoon from just days before it was deployed to Iraq in the spring of 2003.

“My unit is probably a good test case,” said Rieckhoff, who now runs the advocacy organization Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. He was the platoon’s commander. “Thankfully all 38 came home alive. A couple of them are back over there.”

He singled out the determined faces. “This guy - Donaldson - is there for a third time,” Rieckhoff said. “This guy became an officer. About a quarter of my guys got divorced. Some are in college. One committed suicide a couple of months after he got back. That’s part of what drove me to start this group.”

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ANOTHER VIEW OF EDUCATIONAL CRISIS, AND A FIX

THE GRIM NEWS of the city’s high dropout rate (45 percent) and low numbers of people with college degrees (18 percent) is even grimmer considering we’re seeing a similar troubling trend in the military.

The National Priorities Project, a research group that analyzes federal data, found that only 71 percent of Army recruits had earned regular high-school diplomas, about 20 percentage points away from its target of 90 percent.

This has far-reaching implications on the battlefields and the homefront, but there is one silver lining: Congress can use it to spur positive action by adapting a 21st-century version of the G.I. Bill.

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In his 2008 State of the Union address, President Bush is expected to focus heavily on the state of the sluggish economy and how to stimulate it, now and beyond. But as Washington wrangles over how best to do this, our leaders have largely overlooked a proven strategy for growth that promises more than immediate relief: a new GI Bill.

When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the original GI Bill in 1944, he ensured that eight million World War II veterans would be able to afford an education. The GI Bill gave many of our nation’s leaders their start, including Presidents Gerald Ford, George H.W. Bush, and former Senators Bob Dole, George McGovern, and Pat Moynihan, to name just a few. Additionally, the GI Bill educated 14 Nobel Prize winners and two dozen Pulitzer Prize winners, including authors Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, and Frank McCourt.

Aside from furthering the education of many veterans, the GI Bill reinvented America after a half-decade of war, and helped to prevent a looming economic crisis. The government’s investment in the GI Bill resulted in higher national productivity, consumer spending, and tax revenue. More impressively, every dollar spent on educational benefits for the Greatest Generation added seven dollars to the national economy.

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A retired soldier who encountered a paperwork foul-up when he tried to get his GI Bill benefits has learned he will receive those benefits - without having to produce an obscure document from 21 years ago.

“We have resolved the issue,” said Department of Veterans Affairs spokesman Steve Westerfeld, noting that the Defense Manpower Data Center has confirmed that retired Army Sgt. 1st Class Jim Kimmel is eligible for Montgomery GI Bill benefits.

When VA officials told him last November that it would be late February or March before the problem would be resolved, Kimmell said, he realized he couldn’t afford to go to school “just hoping they’ll get it ironed out some day.” By the time the problem was resolved, it was too late for him to start the latest semester.

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There is a resolution currently being considered in the American Legion, District 8, Department of New Hampshire that urges the New Hampshire Legislature and the University of New Hampshire system to provide, and fully fund, scholarships for today’s Operation Enduring Freedom/Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF) warriors who fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively.

Due in part to corporate-bought Congress and its specious dogmatic opprobrium and apathy to providing a 21st century GI Bill, which could correct the disparities to National Guard benefits, among other things, this scholarship benefit is past its time for us to provide. The charge is, rightfully or otherwise, left to the states to rectify this tragic injustice.

The GI Bill of our fathers and grandfathers had, by some quantitative estimates, a six-to-eight fold return for the investment. Qualitatively, the positive results were, no doubt, exponential if not immeasurable. Not a bad investment of public funds.

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Many a high school history student has learned about the G.I. Bill and the positive effect it had on the nation’s economy following World War II.

The G.I. Bill provided for college or vocational education for returning veterans as well as one year of unemployment compensation. It also provided loans for returning vets to buy homes and start businesses.

Today, troops and veterans across the United States are still benefiting from the measure that was passed as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal in 1944.

Branson native Kory Klein is one of them.

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The 10-year time limit on GI benefits needs to be lifted, as more and more veterans can’t go back to school immediately after leaving the service, a Washington lawmaker said Thursday.

Many veterans face lengthy recovery from war wounds or family obligations, Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Lake Stevens, said.

“Veterans should not be limited to an arbitrary timeline that prevents them from getting the education and job training they need when they need it,” Larsen told a House Veterans Affairs subcommittee in prepared testimony.

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Disabled veteran Bruce Greener, who has nerve damage and works part-time in McGregor, is worried about how he’ll put his four children through college.

His teenage daughter has scrimped to save for college since she was 15. She’s going to a technical school next year. If money wasn’t so tight, she’d be going to the University of Northern Iowa to study social work.
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Greener and his wife, Sharon, who have children ages 18, 16 and twins who are 11, hope lawmakers will make it easier for disabled veterans to put kids through college.

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Ana Owen writes:

My husband is a veteran with GI Bill and will be in the Police Academy of Montgomery County, MD for 6 months. After the academy he will have to go through 3.5 months of field training where he will be supervised by a police officer from the department of police. My husband is also a ANG reservist and got the GI Bill Kicker for 350usd as a benefit when he signed up. Do you know if he is eligible for GI Bill payments during the 6 months of academy and during the 3.5 months of field training? If so, how much would he get every month considering the GI bill kicker? Thank you so much for your time.

Please leave anything you know regarding these questions in the comment section. Thanks!

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