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Group lobbies for boost in GI payments

A major military association that will push for improvements in GI Bill benefits in 2008 says its top priority in that area will be the need to finally raise payment rates to cover the average cost of attending a four-year public college.

The Military Officers Association of America also wants National Guard and reserve members to receive one month of active-duty education benefits for every month they are mobilized.

The group also says:

• Reserve GI Bill benefits for all Guard and reserve members should be worth 47 percent to 50 percent of active-duty benefits.

• Control of and budgeting for the Reserve GI Bill should be shifted from the Pentagon to the Department of Veteran Affairs.

• There should be a military-wide open enrollment period for GI Bill benefits.

The group’s recommendations were made in a Dec. 21 letter to Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.C., who chairs the House Veterans’ Affairs economic opportunity subcommittee and is planning to review the GI Bill early in 2008.

Retired Army Col. Robert Norton, MOAA’s deputy director of government relations, noted that Congress has taken some steps to improve GI Bill benefits.

For example, lawmakers have agreed to allow Guard and reserve members — who once could use Reserve GI Bill benefits only as long as they remained in a drilling status — to use their benefits within 10 years after separating from the military, just like active-duty members.

Congress also has tried to make it easier for mobilized reservists to earn more generous active-duty GI Bill benefits, but Norton said more needs to be done.

“An active-duty member who serves three years can receive $1,101 in GI Bill benefits, but a reservist who is mobilized for three years can receive only 80 percent of that amount. That is outrageous, and we need to change that,” he said.

Although active-duty GI Bill benefits are now indexed and rise each year with inflation, they still cover only about 75 percent of the average cost of a four-year public college education, because college costs tend to rise faster than inflation.

Raising rates to cover average college costs would encourage more people to use the benefits, Norton said.

Under the MOAA plan, benefits would be around $1,376 a month.

The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee has been considering an even more generous proposal, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would cover average tuition and pay a monthly stipend.

Norton said MOAA and a partnership of military and education associations pushing for GI Bill increases would support Webb’s idea, which has been held up because lawmakers have not figured out how to pay for it.

MOAA proposes that mobilized Guard and reserve members get month-for-month education benefits at the active-duty rate so that people with multiple periods of service would be treated the same as those with only a few longer periods of active duty, and so their benefits are the same as what active members earn.

Two MOAA recommendations have their roots in a single issue: the erosion in the value of Reserve GI Bill benefits compared to active-duty benefits.

The maximum GI Bill payment for reservists is $317 a month, less than 30 percent of the active-duty benefit and far less than when the modern-day Montgomery GI Bill program was established in 1984, when reservists received payments equal to 47 percent of the active-duty rate.

To restore proportional parity, MOAA proposes phasing in increases over a three- to five-year period that would bring reserve payments to about $517.

And to attack the primary cause of the decline, MOAA recommends that the Reserve GI Bill — a Defense Department program administered by VA — be transferred completely to VA.

Norton said the Pentagon has resisted increasing GI Bill benefits because it considers them to be primarily a recruiting incentive. Shifting the program to VA could make a benefits increase more likely, he said.

Having an open enrollment for GI Bill benefits is a mostly symbolic issue, as more than 90 percent of people who have enlisted since the Montgomery GI Bill was created have enrolled in the program.

MOAA said some officers who were left out because benefits were not available to service academy and ROTC graduates could be offered benefits in return for agreeing to stay in the military longer.

DISCUSS: The Bill