Military Education Part II

February 7, 2008 By CJ
Posted in Top Posts

Senators are pressing the Defense Department on ways to improve the GI Bill. I got an email from Congressman Bartlett about H.R. 5229, a bill to allow servicemembers to transfer unused GI Bill education benefits to family members. In his 2008 State of the Union address, President Bush asked Congress to “join me in…allowing our troops to transfer their unused education benefits to their spouses or children.”

Congressman Bartlett said, “It’s only fair to allow our service members to use the full amount of the GI Bill benefits they have earned. I think this bill will also save money. The ability to transfer unused benefits to a spouse or children could make a critical difference to senior NCOs and officers who might otherwise leave the military because they can’t afford to send them to college. With the support of the President, a bipartisan Senate bill and eager support from our colleagues, I am hopeful that it can become law.”

I’ve written my Congressman about this and I would urge you to as well. There need to be some more provisions in this bill. To wit, right now the military services are going to use this possibility as a reenlistment incentive, as they do already. This would mean that those of us who can no longer reenlist because we have more than 10 years in the military will lose our benefits if we don’t use them. Benefits that we PAID INTO! If Soldiers are smart and obtain their degree while in the military, there really isn’t a need for the benefit for ourselves really. Why can’t I pass it along to my kids or wife? I paid for it. The bill needs to make it clear to the DoD that the GI Bill transfer benefit will be offered to all eligible troops without restriction as long as they paid into it. The bill should abolish the 10 year requirement and extend it to the life of the veteran, then transferred to children.

The IAVA is also all over this. Part of their 2008 legislative agenda calls attention to this issue:

IAVA supports a modernized WWII-style GI bill that fully covers the cost of an education at any public school or equivalently-priced private school. Benefits for Reserve/National Guard servicemembers should be based on the cumulative length of their deployments and not on their single longest deployment. Tuition costs should be paid up front and directly to the college, allowing veterans access to education without forcing them to rely on loans.

Congress is beginning to listen, but we need your help to get everyone on the hill involved.