Here We Go Again: New threat to GI Bill

DeJa-Vu all over again, looks like another series of decades of not sacrificing by country nor demanding to, making winded promises then chipping away at even those while the continuing underfunding of the Veterans Administration goes on, till the next wars of choice with the flag wavin and cheap 'support' banners! As the tepubs, especially, do their deeds of chipping away the responsibility of the Country and Country has no qualms!

A limit on tuition increases

Nov 1, 2011 - The promise of a GI Bill that fully pays for a four-year college education could be eroding.

The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, the 12-member bipartisan panel empowered to come up with $1.2 trillion in cuts in federal spending, has before it a plan to cut $7 billion from veterans education benefits over 10 years by capping the annual increase in tuition rates at 3 percent.

The Veterans of Foreign Wars is stridently opposed to such a change, Executive Director Robert Wallace wrote in an Oct. 21 letter to the committee: “Your colleagues in the House and Senate both recognized at the time of [the Post-9/11 GI Bill’s] passing that this investment in our nation’s battlefield leaders would create a new ‘Greatest Generation’ to help our nation recover from its current economic woes. Now, only two years into the fledgling program, this benefit is on the chopping block while many of those eligible cannot utilize it, as they continue to defend our nation.”

The Post-9/11 GI Bill, which took effect in 2009, is the most generous education benefit since World War II. It’s also expensive. The Veterans Affairs Department has paid $11 billion in benefits, and there is no limit on how much more could be spent as Iraq and Afghanistan veterans leave the service and enter a poor job market that makes attending college more attractive. read more>>>