This says it all and not only as to Texas, where this state legislator serves, as well as not only to the program pointed out. But from the Federal level on down to the States and Local governments, especially in this past decade of two long wars and occupations following the previous decades of same, but especially the greater masses of civilians who are represented by those they hire to elective office and their staffs who most don't and never will serve, the some other one percent who do, yet wave those flags of patriotism while not demanding they sacrifice as to the years of these wars nor the long term results of. And also not only related to education, the long time under funding of the Veterans Administration on the Federal Level and yes State levels as well.
This certainly hasn't been the country of our parents, the greatest nation, of and the years coming out of the Second World War, or for you younger folks your grandparents, while we pretended it was with all those easy credit scheme's, and hasn't been for decades now.
State Senator Leticia Van de Putte is chairwoman of the Veteran Affairs and Military Installations Committee.
March 24, 2012 - In recent weeks, the military veterans who so proudly and bravely put their lives on the line for our country have heard a disquieting message coming from our state's institutions of higher education: They have been told that they and their children are a "burden" upon our public universities and colleges.
Specifically, there have been reports that the Hazlewood Legacy Program is starting to place an unbearable strain on these schools. The Hazlewood Act is the Texas law providing veterans with tuition and fee exemptions to public universities and colleges, and the Legacy Program is a 2009 amendment allowing veterans to transfer unused Hazlewood benefits to their children.
In an interview with The Eagle, Texas A&M University President R. Bowen Loftin said the burden was "extraordinary." That word "burden" was used again by a Houston Chronicle reporter, with Loftin stating, "we're being squeezed."
Well, as the proud author of the Legacy Act, let me offer you the other side. With the utmost respect to President Loftin and his fellow college administrators, fingers are being pointed in the wrong direction.
First, Hazlewood is not what is causing the financial burdens of our public universities and colleges. The blame for that falls squarely at the feet of the Texas Legislature and our leadership. Let's be real. In formulating the current budget during the 2011 Legislature, our leaders and lawmakers, obsessed with a cuts-only mentality, slashed millions from each university and college, despite the objections of many of my pro-higher education colleagues and me. UT-Austin lost $92 million for the biennium, Texas A&M $35.8 million, Texas Tech $61 million, among other schools
In The Eagle, an A&M faculty member said, "I certainly have no problems with veterans' families having those benefits, but for the state not to fund it is absolutely outrageous."
But the problem isn't that the Legislature didn't fund Hazlewood -- it's that since 2003, we have eroded funding for our universities and colleges, period.
Second, Hazlewood is not new -- veterans have been entitled to these benefits since 1923, so the potential for vets to enroll has been there for decades, as has the schools' ability to plan for them. read more>>>
Thankfully there have always been small groups of citizens who do pay attention to the needs of those who serve and what the country, as a whole, has put many through especially in our wars of choice. But our military and thus veterans and families of don't serve only these small groups of caring and understanding citizens scattered around the country and contently fighting for the needed funding to carry on, who stand beside us fighting the rest of the population through their representatives, we serve the whole country and it's the countries responsibility that is owed back and not in cheap symbols and words of whose more patriotic then who, they also don't serve political ideology nor especially religion.
This past decade, especially, has only seen, while the country has yet to sacrifice nor demand to, the taking on of what wasn't done at the start of these wars and in the early years of, everyone was told to go shopping, on the federal level, as states had started cutting, actions from the 110th and 111th congresses and they were only able to accomplish a fraction of what is needed. The only ones consistently trying to help the veterans, and their families, of our military as well as the military, but don't make the government policy into law, are those directly in and around the executive branch of the highest office of the Country, and that, started even before they came into office, continues.
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