House panels pass 13 veterans’ bills

House panels pass 13 veterans’ bills

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Apr 23, 2008 16:59:21 EDT

Thirteen veterans’ bills, including landmark legislation updating GI Bill benefits and home loan programs, passed two House subcommittees Wednesday — a display of activity that stands is in sharp contrast to the deadlock in the Senate on veterans’ legislation.

House lawmakers passed seven benefits and five health care bills on a bipartisan basis, a sign that compromise is still possible despite an increasingly bitter and partisan split in the Senate over veterans’ legislation.

Among the benefits bills passed by the House Veterans’ Affairs economic opportunity panel is HR 5684, the Veterans’ Education Improvement Act.

That bill would increase GI Bill payments, provide $500 a month to cover living expenses for full-time students, and allow benefits to be used to repay student loans or cover a wider variety of vocational and business training.

It also would change the way service members buy into the GI Bill program, allowing the $1,200 contribution to be collected over two years instead of one, and would allow service members to enroll in the GI Bill at any time in their career, not just during basic training.

Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., chairwoman of the economic opportunity panel, said the bipartisan bill is part of an overdue modernization “to make benefits more flexible and meet the rapidly escalating costs of higher education and training.”

The Defense Department raised objections last week to some parts of the bill, but accepted the proposed increase in basic GI Bill payments from the current $1,101 a month for people who have three or more years of active service and are full-time students, to a new monthly maximum of $1,450.

Defense officials did not support the $500 in monthly living expenses called for by the bill.

Herseth Sandlin said the education bill does not cut as wide a swath as some other GI Bill proposals, such as two competing measures introduced in the Senate that are creating a partisan divide. But limiting the bill to specific issues makes it relatively affordable — $595 million in the first year, compared to a $2 billion estimate on the Senate bills — and also allows her subcommittee to pass a measure while everyone else is still talking.

The House bill is more limited than other proposals. It does not address National Guard and reserve issues because they do not fall under jurisdiction of the veterans’ committee, and the bill does not include any proposal to transfer benefits to family members, something many troops say they want but that Herseth Sandlin said she is not ready to support.

The economic opportunity panel also passed bills that would make it both easier and less costly for veterans to refinance home loans by reducing administrative fees and increasing the maximum loan amount. It would also impose a one-year moratorium after release from active duty on the sale, foreclosure or seizure of property that was purchased by a service member before they began active service.

Some of the other benefits bills passed by the committee would:

• Transfer responsibility for GI Bill benefits for Guard and reserve members from the Pentagon to the Department of Veterans Affairs.

• Update VA’s program for providing grants to veterans who need housing adapted to their service-connected disabilities.

• Order a 20-year study of vocational rehabilitation programs to see how specific groups of veterans are helped by current programs.

• Allow VA to purchase national advertising to tell veterans about benefits available to them.

The House Veterans’ Affairs health subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Michael Michaud, D-Maine, approved bills that would establish a director of physician assistant services within VA; expand spina bifida health care programs for children of Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the herbicide Agent Orange; expand prevention and treatment programs for substance abuse; and expand circumstances under which veterans are reimbursed for emergency treatment in non-VA facilities.

Also approved was a bill authorizing leases and construction of veterans’ medical facilities.

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/04/military_veteransbenefits_bills_050508w/