CQ WEEKLY - IN FOCUS
Sept. 17, 2007 - Page 2670

New G.I. Bill Up Against Hill, White House Rebuffs

By Patrick Yoest, CQ Staff

Patrick Campbell and Bill Ferguson are Iraq War veterans who have visited so many congressional offices together this year lobbying for a new G.I. Bill that they sometimes finish each other's sentences.

Take the issue of whether offering young people a cash bonus to join the military is a good idea. "We are just throwing," Campbell starts to say, "buckets of gold at these guys immediately," Ferguson interjects. It would be better, the two members of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America tell a legislative aide for a Southern Republican senator, if the government spent the money on education benefits after soldiers were discharged.

Today's benefits are so inadequate that Iraq War veterans getting out of the military "are having to make the choice of going to school and living on mama's couch or not going to school at all," Ferguson tells the aide, who nods sympathetically. Under the 1984 Montgomery G.I. Bill - the last time the benefits were renewed - the government pays a maximum of $1,075 a month for school, although the average monthly cost of attending public college is about $1,450 a month, according to the Education Department.

At the end of the Senate office meeting, the aide tells Campbell and Ferguson she will recommend that her boss cosponsor a G.I. Bill introduced by Jim Webb, the freshman Democrat from Virginia and former Navy secretary. But weeks later, the senator still has not signed on.

The reality that Campbell, Ferguson and other Iraq War veterans are facing is that there are limits to how much assistance Congress and the Bush administration can extend to returning servicemembers, and a new G.I. Bill appears to lie over the line.

Despite lobbying by major veterans' organizations, such as the American Legion, the Military Officers Association of America and Veterans of Foreign Wars, and new groups such as the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, the administration is actively opposing a new G.I. Bill, and Congress has been, at most, ambivalent.

Some influential lawmakers, such as the Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House Veterans' Affairs committees - Daniel K. Akaka of Hawaii and Bob Filner of California - express support for the concept but have done little to make it happen.

The reasons are money and manpower.

The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that Webb's proposal, which would increase education assistance for veterans and extend the benefits to National Guard and reserve veterans with two years of active-duty service, would cost $74.7 billion over 10 years. Webb's office says the estimate is too high, but some of his colleagues worry anyway about how to offset the new spending. Though Webb introduced the bill Jan. 4, the Veterans' Affairs Committee has not yet marked it up.

The administration says that raising education benefits as Webb proposes would create an incentive for active-duty servicemembers to drop out at a time when the services are hard-pressed to retain experienced personnel.

"We have a delicate balance we have to maintain in order to ensure a strong and ready military for America, and it is actually possible to upset that balance and hurt our retention by being too generous with some of our recruiting incentives," Curt Gilroy, who oversees military recruiting plans as accession policy director at the Defense Department, said in a statement.

Strong Inducements

The purpose of the original G.I. Bill, passed in 1944, wasn't to spur recruitment but to help returning military personnel fit into civilian life - the official title was the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act" - by paying for college and helping with home and farm loans. Congress revised the plan during the Korean and Vietnam wars. The 1984 law, in addition to updating education benefits, expanded them on a limited basis to members of the National Guard and reserves. Individuals who remain enrolled in the reserves are eligible for up to $309 a month for school. Once they leave the reserves, though, the benefits stop.

Several lawmakers have talked about revising the program to take into account the rising cost of college, Iraq veterans' needs and the expanded role the National Guard and reserves have played in the conflict.

Last year, Republican Rep. Steve Buyer of Indiana, who at the time chaired the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, indicated that he would introduce a new G.I. Bill but, concerned about recruitment and retainment issues, "thought it necessary to explore the options" before doing so, according to Buyer spokesman Jeff Phillips.

As Gilroy explained in testimony before Senate Veterans' Affairs two months ago, a study by human services consultants earlier this year found that if G.I. Bill benefits reached the actual cost of college, more personnel would be induced to cash in by leaving the military than would be induced to join.

If anything, Webb's proposal would exceed the figures in the study. The latest version, which Webb's office said was less expensive than the one analyzed by the VA, would provide the equivalent of the highest-priced in-state college or university tuition in any given state, as well as room and board and a $1,000-a-month stipend.

Reserve Concerns

Some veterans' groups see the possibility of a more limited, and less expensive, approach that might build a foundation for the kind of changes Webb is seeking. For instance, Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat, has a bill that would not increase the value of education benefits for active-duty veterans but would provide educational aid for reservists and Guard personnel once they left the service. That could begin to address the realities of current military deployments, according to experts.

"If you spend eight years in the reserve or Guard, and maybe you spend two or three years in Iraq, and you leave the service, you can't use your G.I. Bill benefits at all," said retired Vice Admiral Norbert R. Ryan Jr., president of the Military Officers Association.

Accruing Benefits

Lincoln's bill would allow Guard and reserve troops to accrue educational benefits for time during which they had been mobilized. That would mean new educational benefits for thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.

Lincoln cites the experiences of the 39th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, an Arkansas Army National Guard unit based in Little Rock, to point out what she sees as inequities with the current system. The unit was deployed in the Baghdad Green Zone and Taji, Iraq, from February 2004 to February 2005. Now the Army has scheduled a second tour in late 2007 or 2008, even for soldiers whose enlistments are completed.

"About 25 percent of them, their term is up," Lincoln said. "But with the stopgap, they're still going."

Ryan sees the legislation as moving in stages. Webb's bill is a broad, fundamental modernization of benefits for veterans. "We strongly support that," said Ryan. "And I'd like to think Congress is willing to pay the cost. But if Congress isn't there yet, then we think Sen. Lincoln's bill is the minimal first step that you have to do."

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans and the Veterans of Foreign Wars are pushing Congress to pass both the Webb and Lincoln bills. "They do not need to be exclusive of each other," Campbell said. "For what we spend in Iraq in 36 hours, we could make sure that every active-duty member gets education for a year."

Webb contends that a step-wise expansion that begins with Lincoln's bill would be "a really bad mistake." But aspects of Lincoln's bill have legislative momentum. A House-passed version of the defense authorization bill already contains language by Rep. Vic Snyder, also an Arkansas Democrat, that would shift reserve and Guard educational benefits from the Defense Department to Veterans Affairs, where active-duty benefits are handled. At budget time, that would keep reservists from having to compete for appropriations with other Defense programs.

Any broader authorizing legislation would have to move through Veterans' Affairs, where leaders don't seem to have an appetite for rapid changes. In the House, Filner has repeatedly expressed interest in passing what he calls a "G.I. Bill for the 21st century" that in addition to higher education allowances would also increase limits on home loans for veterans. He said he intends to mark up such a measure by the end of the current session, after hearings, but has not divulged details.

Akaka said in a statement that he is "concerned that the current structure of benefits is somewhat flawed," specifically citing differences between benefits for active-duty and reserve troops. But he cautioned that developing the right approach to the issues "is not a quick or easy process" that is "further complicated" by jurisdictional issues between Veterans' Affairs and Armed Services.

Such delays don't sit well with the impatient Webb, who cited testimony Gen. David H. Petraeus delivered in which he told a congressional committee that for him, it "remains an enormous privilege to soldier again in Iraq with America's new greatest generation."

The allusion to World War II veterans - recipients of a robust educational benefit for their service - piqued Webb.

"The greatest generation got all their tuition paid for, all their books bought, a monthly stipend," Webb said. "I think we need to do everything we can to get the bill done."

For Further Reading: Webb's bill is S 22, Lincoln's is S 644; defense authorization bill (HR 1585), CQ Weekly, p. 2544; G.I. Bill, 2006 CQ Weekly, p. 1068; Montgomery G.I. Bill (PL 98-525), 1984 Almanac, p. 56.

Source: CQ Weekly
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