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Extend & Expand The GI Bill!

By VVAW

A vet from Chicago trade school recently visited the VA to inquire about his late check, only to find that his course of study had lost its VA accreditation. Thousands of veterans across the country far into a new school quarter have yet to see their checks. At Citrus State College in Southern California, the VA audited all vets' records and suspended payments (see story on page 13).

It's not by mere chance that these actions against veterans are occurring at these and thousands of others places around the US. What we as veterans are faced with today is an all-out attack to cut back, limit, and finally eliminate the GI Bill altogether.

On January 21 of this year, Ford's proposed budget was introduced to Congress. It includes a major section on vets including the proposal that the 10-year eligibility period for using educational benefits should be cutback to 8 years (the period of eligibility was extended to 10 years only 8 months ago). There will be "tougher enforcement" to collect money from vets who, the VA claims, have "deviated" from the approved course of study. Additionally, if vets have private health insurance and go to VA hospitals with non-service connected disabilities, they will have to foot the bills. The VA neglected to add that the health insurance payments will probably skyrocket to where the disabled vet can no longer pay them.

The attack on vets is slick. They hit us from both sides. On one side the President and Congress are in the process of cutting off future educational benefits, restricting programs, and reducing the amount of time we have to collect the Bill, not to mention cutbacks on disability programs, pensions, and more. On the other side, the amount of money that they give us can't keep up with inflation and the rising cost of living. Today we supposedly get more money than World War II vets on the GI Bill, but it doesn't amount to anything towards a decent education.

The GI Bill didn't just fall out of the sky one day. It came into existence following WWII as a result of growing dissatisfaction among vets and GIs. While it was the first of its kind, veterans of every war from the Revolutionary War on, had voiced their anger fro fighting a war and then being turned loose with little or no compensation and no jobs. One example of this struggle was in 1932 when 25,000 World War I vets participated in an action called the Bonus March demanding a cash bonus promised them by the government for their military service. They were ruthlessly attacked and several were killed by police and military forces in Washington, D.C.

When the GI Bill was created in 1944, it wasn't just some kind of handout given veterans out of the goodness of some rich peoples' hearts. Knowing how veterans had always fought for we need, the rich looked overseas at the 11 million soldiers eating dirt and spilling blood on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific islands. The people in power knew damn well that something had better be done for these soldiers when they returned home or there would be hell to pay. Around the world, WW II GIs were beginning to organize. Organizations like the "Back Home Movement" in the Philippines and others like it in Europe were demanding to be sent home and that their needs be provided for.

The American capitalists could afford the GI Bill, at this point, because when the war ended, they were on top of the world. Europe was devastated. The poorer nations were relatively helpless. With no major industrial power in the world to oppose them, the rulers of the US were free to exploit and rip off profits from people all over the world. Thus they were able to accommodate vets with a barely adequate GI Bill and still keep their big profits rolling in. They could easily afford to train vets for jobs in industry because then industry was expanding and the US economy's future looked rosy. But it didn't stay that way for very long.

Then, as today, the economy began to say. Gone was the intense need for better-trained and educated employees. The factory owners had enough. At the same time, Congress began to "restructure" the GI Bill and begin the cutbacks that we face today.

The Korean Conflict Legislation of 1952 and the Cold War Bill of 1966 were both hailed as vast improvements on the WWII Bill because they provided extended periods of eligibility for receiving and using benefits. One the surface these bills looked good, but was going down were some drastic changes in the distribution of benefits. A more selective process of qualifications and payment for the Bill, time limitations on its use, continual reexamination and cutbacks in the disability payments, the inability of payments to match the cost of living; in short, more red tape and VA hassles which grew and grew until reaching the present point.

Under that first GI Bill, vets automatically had the cost of their education, (tuition, books and fees) paid for them and received an additional living allowance. Vietnam-era vets receive a straight monthly allowance for education that is supposed to pay for educational expenses plus living expenses. At the 1946 purchasing value $75 was nearly equal to the cash which vets get today when we receive $270 per month (for a single vet) to pay for everything. The amount that vets get today doesn't meet the cost of living expenses, much less anything left over to go to school with and pay the inflated fees there. While it appears to be more money today, it actually falls way short of the WW II Bill.

The cost of education today, nearly triple what it was in 1946, and the cost of living, which rose 20% in the last two years alone have made the GI Bill today a mere shadow of the WW II benefits. Since the first GI Bill, every year has brought an annual review of the evaluation procedures that determine eligibility for all benefits, who gets them, and how much. Each year has also brought steady cutbacks in the number of these benefits given out and shrinking the amounts for various sections of the GI Bill. In August 1975, Ford signed a bill hiking benefits 10-12% for disabilities, an action that was given headlines of a tremendous advance in vets benefits. This "tremendous advance" didn't even cover the cost of living for the previous year. Not satisfied to undermine the GI Bill, they are trying to push through Congress legislation to eliminate the GI Bill entirely for people currently or soon to be in the military. At the same time, Ford, like the puppet he is, did away with many existing benefits by Presidential Proclamation.

Moving behind a smokescreen of "economic necessity" the Ford administration, with the help of the media, are portraying vets who obtain the GI Bill as chiselers who abuse the Bill and waste money that could be used elsewhere. Last summer, Dr Stanley Provost, an office of the National Association of State Approving Agencies, whose members certify colleges for VA approval, stated that "It's difficult to prove in every case whether the student is willfully attempting to defraud the government." Later in the same statement, Provost pushed the ideas that more and more vets are cheating the government, leading people to assume that most vests are guilty until proven innocent, The ideas and attitudes being sold here and in similar articles around the US completely overlook the real problem. Unemployment among vets is incredibly high; many vets have had to take jobs that pay less than established poverty levels. The question isn't whether or not vets are attending all their classes but how they are going to stay alive, if they can find work. We need those checks. We need them to raise our education levels for better jobs and we need them to feed ourselves and our families when we attend school to get the GI Bill for lack of jobs. The GI Bill isn't an offer that be withdrawn based on bureaucratic necessity or VA regulations. They owe it to us for all the crap they put us through, and we mean to have it!

While they make us out to be kind of greedy criminals, we remember who pocketed the bucks when they sent us off to be killed, wounded, or to kill some other people in their interests. These same people, who Mr Provost and others like him speak for, will promise anything when they want fresh meat for the battlefield, but when it comes time to pay up, they start with GI Bill fraud stories. The result is, we have to fight like hell for what was rightfully ours to begin with.

Vets everywhere are saying enough! Unemployment among Vietnam-era vets is higher than the national average. Many of us have turned to school to stay alive. Others are going to school to improve what job skills they have or gain more education in hopes of a better job. Now, with the GI Bill under heavy attack, we've had a bellyful of this crap. For the last two years, VVAW has been fighting these cutbacks on a daily basis in many cities, but this isn't enough. Today, VVAW is turning its attention nationally to this attack on the GI Bill. By petitioning and uniting with vets around the country, we begin this campaign to extend and expand the GI Bill. Veterans everywhere, from all eras, have to build that unity which makes us a national fighting veterans movement. With that unity we will be able to stand up and meet all attacks on veterans, like the current attack on the GI Bill.

We have to fight for what we need we're not going to let the rich take it back from us--little by little, or all at once!