COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Leaving Military: Veterans
War Veterans Denied GI Bill Benefits
Ron Martz, Cox News Service
July 10, 2006
Summerville, Georgia - Andy Rowe thought he had life after the Army
pretty well figured out before he came home from eight months in
Afghanistan in November 2003.
An Army reservist since high school, Rowe, 27, planned to serve out
the remaining four months of his military obligation in the inactive
Reserve, get his honorable discharge and then use his GI Bill education
benefits to go to college, just as his father did more than 30 years ago.
But Rowe soon realized that, despite his time in a combat zone, he
didn't qualify for those education benefits unless he remained in the
Reserves or Guard.
It's the same for tens of thousands of National Guard and Army
Reserve troops mobilized since 9/11 - the largest deployment of
reservists since World War II.
When military benefits were updated in 1984 through a law called
the Montgomery GI Bill, members of Congress and even the military did
not envision reservists being called into active duty as frequently as
they are today. The law did not extend full college benefits to citizen
soldiers and terminated them once they left the Guard or Reserve.
But since 2001, more than 500,000 reservists and Guard troops have
been deployed for homeland security duties or sent to wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Yet when they get home, they don't get the same benefits as
those who were active-duty service members.
"Looking at how the Reserve forces are being used now, it really
upset me," said Rowe, called up from the inactive Reserves to serve in
Afghanistan.
Retired Army Col. Bob Norton is deputy director for government
relations for the Washington-based Military Officers Association of
America, which is lobbying for an extension of benefits.
"Under the law, [reservists and Guard troops] are veterans for
every single benefit except the education benefits," Norton said.
Primary opposition to changing the education benefit for reservists
and Guard troops - those on duty one weekend a month and two weeks in
summer unless they are called to active duty - is coming from the
Pentagon's Office of Reserve Affairs. Pentagon officials fear changes
could hurt attracting and keeping men and women who sign up for the
Guard or Reserve.
"It has proven to be a very attractive recruiting tool, and its
effectiveness as a retention tool is certainly equally important to the
Reserve components," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Reserve Affairs
Thomas Hall testified in March before the House Veterans Affairs Committee.
The Military Officers Association has helped put together a
consortium of about 40 groups and service organizations that represent
more than 5.5 million vets - including such stalwarts as the American
Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, Association of the U.S. Army and
Military Order of the Purple Heart - collectively known as the
Partnership for Veterans Education. Several higher education
associations such as the American Association of State Colleges and
Universities and the American Council on Education also are part of the
consortium. Its aim: to try to persuade Congress to provide more
equality in education benefits for citizen soldiers.
The group is pushing especially hard for what it is calling the
Total Force Montgomery GI Bill. One major selling point of this proposal
is the portability of GI Bill education benefits. That would allow
reservists such as Rowe to earn credits for education while mobilized,
just like active-duty troops do, and then use them after they leave the
service.
Current law gives troops who serve on active duty three or more
years to collect up to $1,034 a month for 36 months as full-time
students. That benefit is available up to 10 years after discharge.
Reserve and Guard troops can earn 60 percent of that, or about
$22,000, if they are mobilized for 15 months - the average length of
deployment - and then go to school full time. However, they can collect
only if they remain in a Guard or Reserve unit. If they go into the
inactive Reserve - also known as the Individual Ready Reserve - as Rowe
did, or are discharged, they no longer are eligible for education benefits.
"Right now, it's a double standard. They are treating these
reservists like second-class citizens," Norton said. U.S. Rep. Jim
Matheson (D-Utah) said Marine reservists in his congressional district
who were deployed after 9/11 alerted him to the disparity in benefits.
"When I heard about it, I didn't think it was right," Matheson said.
Last year, he co-sponsored with Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.)
legislation that would enable Guard and Reserve troops who have accrued
24 months of active service within the last five years to be eligible
for 100 percent of GI Bill education benefits.
Some unofficial cost estimates of the Total Force Montgomery GI
Bill run as high as $4.5 billion for the first 10 years, although the
Congressional Budget Office has yet to weigh in with more detailed figures.
Despite its cost, which could become a key obstacle in Congress,
the bill now has 140 co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, including
Georgia Democrats John Barrow, Sanford Bishop, John Lewis and David
Scott and Republican Nathan Deal.
"This is truly a bipartisan issue because it's about veterans,"
Matheson said.
The MOAA's Norton said another measure in the works is an amendment
offered by Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) to the fiscal year 2007 Defense
Authorization Bill.
This amendment would enable Guard and Reserve members mobilized for
active duty to use their GI Bill education benefits after they leave
military service.
Hall, the assistant secretary of defense who also is a retired rear
admiral, told members of Congress that such a change could affect troop
retention.
"The fact that a member must continue to serve in the Reserves to
maintain eligibility has greatly assisted the Reserve components as a
whole in maintaining consistently high retention rates over the years
and has increased the education level of our Reserve forces," he said.
But Norton contends that the Defense Department's own survey data
show education is not a major factor in an individual's decision to
re-enlist or extend in the Guard or Reserves.
Rowe said education benefits he thought he would receive as a
reservist were only part of his decision to enlist in 1996, when he was
17 and still a high school junior in his hometown of Summerville.
"My father instilled a true sense of patriotism in me, and I wanted
to do something for the country," Rowe said.
His father, Tim, had served in the Air Force and used his GI Bill
benefits to obtain an education degree and become a teacher.
Rowe went to basic training between his junior and senior years in
high school and then was assigned to a unit - first in Chattanooga, and
later in Atlanta - as an information systems specialist. He served
nearly six years in the active Reserve force before transferring to the
Individual Ready Reserve.
In April 2003 he was recalled to active duty and sent to
Afghanistan, giving up his civilian job as a project manager for a
telecommunications company.
"All I wanted to do when I came home was get another job and go
back to school. But then when I applied I found out I couldn't use the
GI Bill so I had to reconsider things," he said.
Rowe now works for Covista Communications out of Chattanooga and
said that the issue for him is not so much the money as the principle.
"I don't think there's anything that will be done to help me now,
but I think it's something that definitely needs to be done for soldiers
in the future," he said.
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Ron Martz writes for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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