Coalition pushes to double reserve GI Bill payouts p1 - GI Bill Benefits - Tuition Assistance for the Military - Military Times EDGE

With all the attention on the generous new GI Bill benefits plan for active-duty members, a decade-long effort to restore the value of education benefits for drilling National Guard and reserve members still languishes.

Reserve GI Bill benefits will have eroded in value so much by Aug. 1, when the new GI Bill program takes effect, that reservists will get 13 percent of the benefits rate of active-duty members.

“The difference between active and reserve GI Bill benefits is getting wider, and it is long past time to do something about it,” said retired Navy Capt. Marshall Hanson, legislative director of the Reserve Officers Association.

“The Reserve GI Bill is viewed by the Pentagon primarily as a recruiting tool, but it’s hard to see how its declining value is much of an incentive to join the reserves,” Hanson said.

The Post-9/11 GI Bill is expected to pay an average of $1,450 in basic monthly benefits, $1,100 in a monthly housing stipend and $100 in a monthly book allowance, for a combined payment of $2,650, although the basic benefits will be paid directly to the school.

GI Bill benefits for the Selected Reserve are tiny by comparison: After an Oct. 1 cost-of-living adjustment, full-time students get $329 a month.

The Military Coalition, a group of more than 30 military-related organizations representing the interests of active, reserve and retired service members and their families, placed restoring the value of the Reserve GI Bill on its list of legislative priorities for 2009.

The coalition wants the $329 monthly payment for full-time students to be increased to between $621 and $660.

“I think it is great that the Post-9/11 GI Bill has passed and that active-duty members and reservists who have been mobilized for extended periods are going to get better benefits, but the remaining GI Bill still needs to be fixed,” said Hanson, a member of the coalition subcommittee that is studying Guard and reserve issues. “The Selected Reserve still needs a GI Bill.”

Retired Navy Capt. Ike Pruzon of the Naval Reserve Association said the GI Bill could be a strong recruiting incentive for the reserve components “if it is increased to the point of being useful.”

“Right now, $329 doesn’t buy you very much education,” he said. “The services don’t want to fund it. They have higher priorities. And Congress has not been able to strip the program away from the services to give it to [the Department of Veterans Affairs], which also may not have the money to fund it.

“As a recruiting incentive, the Reserve GI Bill has been dying for the last five to 10 years.”

Long-term decline

GI Bill benefits for reservists have slowly eroded in value since 1985, when Congress set rates for drilling reservists at about half of the payment for active-duty members.

Neither active-duty nor reserve benefits kept pace with rising college tuition through the 1980s and ‘90s. In 2001, Congress moved to restore the value of active-duty benefits with a 36 percent increase spread over two years — but it didn’t apply to reserve benefits.

As a result, reservists have been getting benefits that are 27 percent of the active-duty rate. The value will fall to about 13 percent when the Post-9/11 GI Bill’s full tuition, housing stipend and book allowance are factored into the mix.

“The Selected Reserve feels as if they are second-class soldiers [with] a second-class GI Bill,” Hanson said.

Congress has talked for many years about improving the situation for reservists, but lawmakers have not been able to overcome a combination of obstacles. For one, the Pentagon has opposed spending money on education benefits for all reservists, instead pushing for enlistment and re-enlistment bonuses for reservists in the most critical skills.

Legislative jurisdiction also has been an issue because the House and Senate Armed Services committees oversee the Reserve GI Bill while the Veterans’ Affairs committees oversee the active-duty program.

The Military Coalition has not and will not give up, Hanson said.

“It is especially important if the active-duty GI Bill is about to undergo a large increase to not forget about drilling reservists,” he said.