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URL: http://www.collegian.com/index.php/article/2012/01/a_financial_slap_in_the_face_for_military_veterans
Current Date: Wed, 23 May 2012 11:53:44 -0600
A financial slap in the face for military veterans
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Of all the cheap ways for the government to save a buck: starting this semester, military tuition assistance has been reduced from 100 percent to 50 percent. What should make you even more enraged is that unless you are a veteran, this is likely the first time you’ve read this.
Let’s just imagine that welfare was cut by as little as five percent. Do you honestly think that this wouldn’t dominate the news? Bleeding hearts everywhere would be up in arms.
But where are they now?
For the past several months, everyone has been so distracted by the clowns involved with Occupy Wall Street that this has totally slipped under the radar. The self-entitled brats demonstrating at OWS were so wrapped up in themselves that they missed the opportunity to protest an actual occurrence of misplaced entitlements.
This reduction in tuition assistance could not have come at a worse time. The announcement of the reduction came in June, and troop withdrawal from Iraq began in December. What does this say to our brave men and women who are returning home, battle-hardened and wanting to move on with their lives?
I think it says, “Welcome home boys! You’ve known nothing but war since you were 18 years old, and now that you’re finally home, we’re gonna stiff you on tuition assistance! Good luck getting your lives back together!”
Then there are people like me. I joined the military because it was my only option to continue my education. I slacked off in high school because I did not see the long-term importance of a higher education. Once I got out into the real world, I realized the error of my ways and enlisted in the Air Force National Guard to take advantage of the benefits of tuition assistance.
I pride myself on my ability to avoid debt. With the reduction of tuition assistance put into place, I now have to put myself in debt with federal aid. Luckily, there are foundations available that offer scholarships to help supplement tuition assistance to pick up the slack where the government has let us down.
I did an extensive search to find out if this was a state-by-state implementation, or if it was on a national scale. I could not find a single thing reporting reductions in Colorado. Heading over to military.com, I learned that these are national cuts, enforced by the Department of Defense and directed by Congress.
This took me by surprise. Our newly elected House, consisting of a Republican majority, hinged their campaigns in 2010 on reducing government spending. I certainly didn’t expect that these spending cuts included taking away from those who deserve government assistance more than anyone.
Frankly, I am all for spending cuts in government, lowering taxes and thus reducing the national debt. But why can’t we look elsewhere for places to save? The answer seems clear. Politicians are politicians, and when it really comes down to it, they are all the same. I guess these newly elected Republicans realize that traditionally military personnel vote in their favor anyway. It would not be politically strategic to take government assistance away from potential voters.
Don’t let the democrats get off too easily, though. Last April, our Democrat-controlled Senate fought for the passage of a bill that allows the children of illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition rates, so long as they have graduated from a Colorado high school.
I feel like I am living in a bizarro world that rewards those who leach off the system and take away from those who put their lives on the line to defend it. This is further proof that politicians are all the same, regardless of party identification.
Don’t get me wrong. I love my country and would die for it regardless of whether or not I received benefits or bonuses. I don’t know of a single marine, airman, soldier or sailor who would forfeit their military service for this reason. The irony of the situation is what frustrates me most of all: I am filling out FAFSA’s and applying for scholarships while some illegal immigrant somewhere is picking up his welfare check.
Chance Johnson is a senior journalism major. He can be reached at letters@collegian.com.
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28 comments
No Revenues = No Sacrifice = No Support = DeJa-Vu all over again! Now a decade and counting added to the previous decades of under funding the VA, while the peoples reps Still try and lay blame on the Agency, after rubber stamping wars and costs of and those represented cheer on these wars! While the wealthy and other investors garner their booty, still, from both and many have the chutz·pa to call themselves more patriotic{?} then others wrapped in those false flags, using false slogans and various cheap symbols of!
USN ’67-‘71 All Shore GMG3 Vietnam In Country ’70-‘71
Don’t blame this on the Republicans, Mr. Johnson. The only thing they control is the House of Representatives. While the Democrats control both the Senate and the white house. The Senate can, and often does, kill any bill it doesn’t care for. In fact they can table any bill they don’t like, to keep it from even being voted upon. Likewise the prez can veto any bill he doesn’t approve of. Which means that two-thirds of the blame for this extremely poor government decision goes to the Democrats.
I believe the funding for your benefits was thrown down the drain on half-baked executive branch projects like Solyndra. The prior administration spent $4 trillion in 8 years. The Obama administration has spent the same $4 trillion, but in only 3 years. Now where do you suppose all that money went, folks? It doesn’t appear to be showing up in the economy anywhere. And we now know that it isn’t going to the veterans, either.
Mr. Johnson, Why don’t you go on active duty and become eligible for the Post 9/11 GI Bill? There is a war going on right now, you know. Lots of oppotunities to go defend your country and earn money for school.
Tuition assistance for active duty veterans (post 9/11 GI Bill) has not been cut. It seems that the cut is to the National Guard tuition assistance, and maybe the tuition assistance for active duty still serving. That tuition assistance was originally 50%, we were just lucky enough to have it raised to 100% for a few years. That doesn’t mean people have the right to complain when it gets lowered back to original levels.
Wait, who’s the self-entitled whiny “victim” in this story? Aww, only half of your tuition is covered? Boo freakin’ hoo! Get a grip and be grateful that even that much is covered by tax payers!
Spoken like men who never served their country, guys.
Perhaps true, but by the author’s own admission, he only joined the Air National Guard for the tuition assistance benefits. Hardly what I would categorize as an individual serving his country.
It seems to me that the author joined the safest component of the coziest branch of the armed forces with a “what can I get out of this” attitude rather than a “what can I contribute, how can I serve” attitude.
That is a far cry from an individual who enlists in an active duty combat arms position in the Army or Marine Corps knowing full well there were two foreign conflicts being waged when they enlisted.
The latter is what I would consider an individual serving their country, the former is what I consider an individual working the system. In short, I share the opinion expressed by others that the author should be grateful to be getting the assistance he is already receiving in these harsh economic times.
You sorority girls should stay out of this.
Not only have the National Guard been called up to serve in the combat zones, but many of them have served several tours and gotten killed.
Jeremy: Your statement could not be farther form the truth. I did not join the National Guard merely as a means to go to college. It was certainly one of the factors that played into my motivations, but I have always desired to serve my country. I am sorry for giving you the wrong impression impression, but as I was quite plain in the last paragraph “ I love my country and would die for it regardless of whether or not I received benefits or bonuses.” If benefits dried up tomorrow, I would not give up my service. I did not join the National Guard with the idea that it would keep my out of harm’s way. I would gladly deploy tomorrow if called to serve. The National Guard has just been a better fit for me. I can pursue other goals as a civilian outside of my proud military status. You obviously have no idea how great a role the National Guard serves in overseas deployments.
The main point of this article is that I feel that the priorities of the U.S. government are completely out of whack: military benefits being reduced while illegal immigrants receive in state tuition.
As of November, we have had 4486 service people killed in Irag and Afghanistan. 11% of the dead are Guardsmen. That’s 493 dead National Guardsmen, and four times that many of them seriously wounded.
So these people objecting to the National Guard receiving their just benefits if they happen to come back whole are, to put it nicely: pathetic ingrates.
@ RI:
I am well aware of the sacrifices made by the Army National Guard. What you failed to catch in my initial assessment is that there is a significant difference between the Air National Guard (the component that our former President utilized to hide out stateside during the Vietnam War) and the Army National Guard (the component that has been heavily taxed with deployments and casualties during our recent conflicts). I am extremely doubtful that Air National Guard casualties are anywhere near the statistics you mentioned for the Army National Guard.
I am not a part of the service, nor do I ever think I will be; simply because I could never do what those brave men and women do. And although I agree it is horrible that their financial assistance for college has been drastically cut, this author points to irrelevant information towards the end of his piece which distract the reader from the actual issue at hand.
First of all, there was no need to pull immigrants into this piece when he is talking about the government cutting military tuition assistance.
As far as the children of immigrants being granted in-state tuition for Colorado, I do not see a problem with that. Because of naturalization, they are indeed American citizens, whether or not anybody agrees with the 14th Amendment. But because the FASFA requires you to submit parental information, it is very hard and nearly impossible for the child of illegal immigrants to receive federal aid. So although people may think many of them are benefiting from federal aid, this is wrong. They have to pay out-of-pocket tuition and will never be lucky enough to receive any financial assistance like the majority of us.
As far as the welfare comment goes, the only real type of welfare an illegal immigrant can obtain is elementary and high school education, as well as emergency medical care (not all “wellfare” is monetary). However, children born in the United States, going back to the naturalization issue, are able to qualify for certain public assistance. What is generally thought as welfare, such as a check like he mentioned, is only available to citizens and legal immigrants with proper paperwork and documentation.
RI- If this guy had actually deployed, he would be eligible for the GI Bill. That’s the point. If he loved his country so much he could always go active, and earn some good education benefits. There are a lot of them out there, you just have to earn them, not expect handouts for nothing.
@Jeremy,
You should really get in the habit of fact checking, instead of spouting off standard popular misconceptions.
According to a January 5, 2012 news release by the Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System, National Guard Bureau: 34,243 Air National Guard have served in the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, successfully completing 44,822 deployments.
@Jack,
Get off of it. It’s the top brass who decide which units get deployed, and where they go.
And guys like you are in NO position to question the patriotism of anyone who has served.
@James,
The term “Naturalized Citizen” has a specific legal meaning, and you are using it incorrectly. A Naturalized Citizen is someone who arrived here legally, and went through the proper legal channels to become a U.S. Citizen. They are assigned a social security number, and they pay all federal and state income taxes. Naturalized Citizen simply means that while they were originally born elsewhere, they later were granted legal U.S. Citizenship.
Secondly, any child who was born in this country, no matter how they arrived here, is automatically a U.S. Citizen, and entitled to all of the rights and benefits of citizenship. That means voting rights, welfare rights, in-state tuition rights, the whole kit and kaboodle. They are citizens just like you and I are.
The tuition issue isn’t about either of the above two groups of citizens. Rather it is over in-state tuition for children who were not born here, but were brought here later on, and their parents are illegal aliens, not U.S. Citizens. Not being citizens, neither the children nor their parents have social security numbers, and they do not pay state and federal income taxes.
@ RI:
You’re right; I should rather take a page from your playbook by backpedaling off of my initial argument when it is challenged and then cherry pick data to suit my weakened argument? You know as well as I that an individual can misrepresent data to support their view in an argument regardless of their stance, and you have shown yourself to be exceptionally well versed at this tactic.
First you responded to my initial post by talking about National Guard casualties, and I suggested that Army National Guard casualties would vastly outweigh Air National Guard casualties and that it is well known the Air Guard is considered a safe haven if an individual wants the benefits of serving, but wants to minimize the threat of being placed in harm.
So you backpedaled from that argument and now wish to discuss simply deployment statistics of the Air Guard. You throw out a random number, but with nothing to compare it to regarding Army National Guard deployment statistics or how these numbers relate to deployments by the active duty personnel, that number means nothing for the comparison I mentioned that you would like to dispel.
To further support my argument and show the entire story rather than a random, large number, here is the comparison that I alluded to;
The following link has a fine comparison of deployment statistics that was apparently prepared for members of Congress in 2008: http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/RS22451.pdf
Take a look at table 1: Without even mentioning deployments there are approximately 3X more Army National Guardsmen than Air National Guardsmen. Remember this value, and we would want the following values to be similar if the Air Guard was supporting a proportional burden of combat in our recent conflicts.
Now table 2: While there were 11,545 National Guardsmen in Iraq on 01/02/2008, 10,583 (92%) of them were Army National Guard, while the remaining 962 personnel (8%) were Air National Guard members. Essentially there were 11X more Army National Guard members in Iraq than Air National Guard members during this time, despite the Army National Guard consisting of a force only 3X larger than the Air Guard. Further statistics shown in the same table reveal the same pattern was occurring in Afghanistan at this time.
Keep this going to table 3, which shows comparisons between active duty forces and National Guard forces: Of the 155,846 total personnel in Iraq on 01/2008 when the 138,000 active duty personnel are taken into account, the Air Guard burden then shrinks to a paltry 0.6% value.
The statistics show that approximately 89% of the burden is appropriately shouldered by active duty members of the military, while the remaining 11% was taken up by the reserves and National Guard. But of that remaining 11% burden, the Air National Guard took up only 5% of it while the Army National Guard took up 58% of it, and the remaining 37% of the National Guard and reserve burden in Iraq was shouldered by Air Force, Army, Marine, and Navy reserve personnel. The table showing Afghanistan figures are similar, showing a slightly greater percentage of the total force was shouldered by National Guard and reserve personnel, yet retaining essentially the same ratios.
So rather than cherry pick the data, if you look at the big picture what I suggested earlier appears to be correct; the Air National Guard is the place to be in the military if you want the benefits of being a part of the military, but would prefer to minimize any risk of seeing combat. This explains why the author of the article we are discussing made it all the way to his senior year without experiencing a single deployment. All of this is before even mentioning that the majority of the Air National Guard consists of support personnel that remain miles back from the actual fighting while the Army National Guard consists of numerous combat arms personnel who are right there in the streets. But I am definitely not getting down on the Air National Guard, I am simply showing it really isn’t all that dangerous. Hell, if there was a Vietnam era style draft today I would be the first in line at the doors of the Air National Guard, knowing what I suspected earlier and now confirmed by being forced to support my position with statistics to counter RI.
Well that was a lot of hair-splitting gibberish out of you. Your original statement was that Mr. Johnson was “Hardly what I would consider to be an individual serving his country.” And as I originally stated, that snarky remark was spoken like a man who never served his country at all. But who energetically attempts to denigrate the contribution of those who did, instead. Paragraph after paragraph of it. Just pathetic.
As you admitted, the difference between Mr. Johnson and yourself is that you would only have enlisted in the Air National Guard in order to avoid being drafted.
Otherwise, wild horses couldn’t have driven you to voluntarily serve in the armed forces at all. That is precisely why Mr. Johnson deserves tuition assistance, while do not.
That last line of mine should read “That is precisely why Mr. Johnson deserves tuition assistance, while YOU do not.”
Jeremy: You are going to an awful lot of trouble explaining why Army Guardsmen deserve assistance more than Air. You’re making it sound like I’m saying the Air Force deserves its benefits more than Army. I don’t understand why you’re doing this, because I am fighting on the behalf of Guardsmen in general. We are all getting our benefits cut. I feel like you have completely missed the point of the article, which is that the priorities of the government and who they assist are completely out of whack.
Chance, you are absolutely right. RI has a habit of dragging individuals into irrelevant discussions, and apparently I took the bait.
I am sorry I questioned your motives in joining the Air National Guard based on one sentence in your column.
It looks like we have a case of “The Manchurian Candidate” syndrome going on with Jeremy here. The poor man can’t be held responsible for anything he says or does.
Jeremy’s Herculean attempts at proving Mr. Johnson’s service unworthy were all someone else’s fault, you see. And that someone who was at fault, was none other than the one person who was defending Mr. Johnson. Everyone can see the logic in THAT.
Get off of it. It’s the top brass who decide which units get deployed, and where they go.
No. During my eight years of active duty in the Marine Corps, I saw many individuals who had a chance to join a unit that was to deploy, and earn education benefits.
And guys like you are in NO position to question the patriotism of anyone who has served.
See above
@Jack,
Thank you for your service to our country. However during your 8 years in the military, Washington had not yet decided to cut $1 trillion out of our defense budget, and bring all of the troops home pronto. The military education benefits website now says the following: that the choice as to which education benefit program to use is a “one time only decision, which is irrevocable.” Their words. Which means that if you happened to choose an education program which just got cut in half; you’re out of luck pal, you can’t switch to another one. But Obama did pay lip service to how very, very grateful the nation is to our men in uniform, last night in his speech.
On the domestic spending side however, Pell Grants, which used to be an honor to receive, are now handed out to any Tom, Dick and Harry to train to be welders, etc., and there is no longer any grade point average requirement to receive one. Interesting priorities.
@RI- I think you’re confusing the Post 9/11 GI Bill and the MGIB with the Tuition Assistance program the author is speaking of. If he is willing to put his life on hold for a year or so, I’m sure he can find a unit to deploy with. That will make him eligible for the GI Bill, which is a far better benefit than TA.
I just don’t like misinformation concerning veterans benefits. There are a lot of good benefits, but you have to earn the best ones (by deploying or otherwise).
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JimS
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