IAVA Not For GI Bill Cap

A recent article in the Virginian-Pilot misstated the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) position on Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits. In an effort to correct this IAVA posted the following statement:

The recent article, "Veterans groups want cap on tuition aid under new G.I. bill," printed in the Virginian-Pilot, grossly misstated the position of IAVA regarding the new GI Bill benefit by implying we are seeking a reduction in the value of that benefit. There is already a cap on the benefits available under the new GI Bill -- it is a cap that varies wildly and unfairly by state. IAVA supports a fairer, national ceiling which would increase the benefit for many veterans who wish to attend private colleges or universities, and would have no effect on anyone attending a public school. Ideally, there would be no cap. But if there is a cap, it should be fair and generous.

The new GI Bill is intended to give every veteran access to an affordable college education, but the VA's recently-issued regulations have made the benefits system both confusing and unfair. Right now, a veteran attending a private school in Arkansas might end up tens thousands of dollars in debt, while a veteran across the border in Texas, with identical tuition costs, gets their school paid for. Besides being inequitable, the system is confusing. Under the VA's patchwork system of tuition and fee benefits, veterans will not be able to make educated decisions about the costs of attending school. IAVA has recommended a simpler system that would increase benefits for thousands of students attending private school, leave the benefits to public school veteran-students unchanged, and would dramatically improve the benefit's fairness. A complete breakdown of our recommendations is available here.

Since 2004, IAVA's mission has been to improve the lives of troops, veterans and their families. IAVA was at the forefront of the fight for a new GI Bill, and we will continue to work closely with the VA and with Congress to resolve these and other oversights within the new GI Bill regulations, so every Iraq and Afghanistan veteran gets the benefits he or she has earned.

Comments

[Sandra D Waller]

I could not agree more with Dr. Heckman. I am a veteran who was retired from the army for physical disability in April of 2008, and whose VA claim was finally determined in February 2009 - but only after I had to seek assistance from a state Veterans Service Officer, who then resubmitted my claim. I was awarded 70% with two of my claims deferred and my major claim, an injury that a I received during military training, denied. I have been seeking employment since I began terminal leave in February 2009, but as of the present, I have been unsuccessful. My request for Vocational Rehabilitation benefits was denied. The reason: Because I have a masters degree. The Voc Rehab counselor informed me that she would have automatically denied my request for this reason, except for the fact that I submitted evidence showing that I had applied for over 300 jobs, so she had to "look it over further." The only recommendation she gave me were for jobs that would require me to either commute two or more hours or relocate. As the Dr. said, it is truly a Catch-22, and I also feel the disdain that the general public seems to have for military veterans.

[Dr. Charles W. Heckman]

Judging from my experience as a Vietnam War veteran, I believe that veterans of our recent wars must understand that money alone is not the solution to the problems they will face when they try to build a civilian career. Congress must be made to understand that fundamental changes to the whole system of benefits are necessary, or our veterans will simply not survive. Federal civil servants will find ways to keep veterans from making use of the benefits to which they are entitled by law if Congress does not set up a system in which sabotage is impossible. Congress will be hindered in this by the protests of the non-veterans who dominate the federal agencies responsible for administering the benefits. Every time Congress has made new laws to enforce veterans' rights, the anti-veteran clique in the civil service has broken those laws. The agencies then take a considerable amount of the funding for veterans' benefits and give them to lawyers to prevent or delay granting these benefits to the veterans who file complaints and eventually attempt to take these complaints to a court for resolution.
It is a truism believed by most Americans that a college education is the key to a better job and a fulfilling career. As someone who has gained top scores on American college and graduate school admissions tests, earned a degree equivalent to a PhD in Germany, and worked for many years as a scientist at foreign universities, I can say that military service nullifies the value of an academic degree in America due to the dominance of a subculture that disparages service in uniform in the defense of the United States.
For many years, senior civil servants assigned by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to help veterans find employment classified only those jobs paying less than $25,000 per year as "suitable for veterans." The DOL made this rule up all by itself. Congress stated many times that veterans should be hired for all kind of jobs, even those at the executive level.
As a result of the DOL’s self-made rule, veterans were not referred to or informed about jobs paying more than $25,000, and only veterans without college degrees had any real chance of finding a job with the assistance of the Department of Labor and the many state agencies the Veterans’ Employment and Training Service finances with its more than $219,000,000 annual budget. Furthermore, better qualified veterans applying for better paying jobs were classified by the Department of Labor as being unsuitable for those jobs. As a result, when a well-qualified veteran was discriminated against for a better paying job, his complaints to the Department of Labor had a 100% chance of being rejected without investigation. In fact, Labor Department investigators were inclined to make statements that the employers were correct in rejecting the veterans because, after all, the Labor Department was insisting that no veteran was qualified enough to earn more than $25,000 per year. As a result of this Catch-22 type of situation, a veteran with poor education and training was likely to be hired for a job paying barely enough for him or her to survive, while a well educated veteran or veteran with special qualifications would find no job at all because he or she would be considered overqualified for jobs paying less than $25,000 per year but would be rejected as unsuitable for jobs paying more, on the instructions of the Department of Labor. A result of this situation was the appearance of large numbers of homeless veterans on the streets of every American city. The non-veterans who have dominated the civilian careers since the Vietnam War are pleased with this situation because their own career chances are improved when they do not have to compete with highly motivated veterans. Furthermore, many of them were sympathetic with the Communists during the Cold War. The were told during the time they themselves spent at colleges and universities that servicemen were equivalent to war criminals.
If education benefits are to be of any value, Congress must see to it that no veteran is denied the chance to study because of late payments of education benefits by the DVA, unequal treatment when seeking admission to colleges and universities, or harassment by professors who simply do not like servicemen and veterans. It must further see to it that any employer rejecting a qualified veteran for employment never again receives even one cent in federal grants or contracts.
Federal civil servants who harass, disparage, or discriminate against veterans for any reason should be removed from the federal service. As long as they remain in the civil service, they will keep veterans out. Because of its long history of malfeasance, the Department of Labor must be relieved of the duty of assisting veterans find employment. Paying employers a bounty for each veteran they employ for at least several years would be one effective method of improving veterans' chances for employment.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel, which is supposed to assist veterans who have been discriminated against, has failed to assist any veteran in an effective way since the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act was passed in 1994. Its lawyers should be fired, and the agency should be abolished. The Merit System Protection Board handles appeals filed by veterans in a fraudulent manner to make sure that the rights of the veteran to preference are never respected. Its decisions frequently contravene the stated intentions of Congress to protect veterans from employment discrimination. It should also be disbanded. Veterans should be given full access to real federal courts, and the judges should be deprived of their self-proclaimed right to dismiss veterans' complaints without a jury trial. Finally, discriminating against veterans should be made a civil rights violation, and veterans should have the same rights before the courts as non-veterans who have faced discrimination because of race, gender, or age. The U.S. Department of Justice should be obligated to criminally prosecute both civil servants and federal contractors for discriminating against veterans in hiring, promotion, or retention, and Justice Department lawyers should be obligated to provide legal assistance to any veteran who feels he has faced employment discrimination and wishes to file a lawsuit.
If Congress really sees to it that its own veterans' laws are respected, then a college degree will begin to have value for a veteran on the employment market, and the familiar homeless veterans will disappear from America's streets. If Congress does not do this because of resistance by those who have no respect for servicemen or veterans, it would behoove servicemen to look around for a foreign country in which they can live and work without having their lives ruined by employment discrimination, just as I had to do after my more than two years of service in Vietnam out of a total of nearly five years as an Air Force pilot.