From The Retired Enlisted Association:
When Congress passed the Veterans, Access, Choice and Accountability Act of 2014 (H.R.3230) to hopefully improve veterans access to healthcare through the VA it they included 2 important educational benefits in the bill. First it required all states to apply in-state tuition rates to veterans using the Post 9/11 GI Bill. Secondly, it made widows and widowers of service members who died in the line of duty after 9/11 qualified to receive the Fry Scholarship. The Fry Scholarship previously applied only to children of those who died in the line of duty.
These were not incidental parts of the bill. When signing it into law President Obama said: “This bill covers a lot of ground, from expanding survivors’ benefits and educational opportunities to improving care for veterans struggling with traumatic brain injury and victims of sexual assault.” (Emphasis added)
At multiple meetings last Thursday TREA’s Deputy Legislative Director Michael Saunders and Washington Executive Director Deirdre Parke Holleman were told by different VA employees that VA was having great difficulty planning for the implementation of the 2 programs within the time requirements specified by the law.
The in-state tuition provision is supposed be in effect by July 1st 2015. VA Under Secretary for Benefits Allison Hickey said that no money had been appropriated to reprogram the automated computer system for the 100,000 potentially affected students. She said that with full funding it would take 2 years to make the changes necessary, not the one provided.
The expansion of the Fry Scholarship program is supposed to go into effect by January 1st 2015. Applications, which include an irrevocable waiver of Chapter 35 education benefits, are to be available on November 3rd but will have to be submitted by paper instead of electronically, as they are now. They do not know the computer application will be up and running. According to DEERS there are only 9,000 beneficiaries but the VA has certainly not worked out how the program will be implemented. When repeatedly questioned about the details the VA official could only answer ”That is a very good question… I will need to look into that.”
It will be very interesting to see what Congress’ reaction will be when they return after the election. When they left they were very unhappy with the VA. At the moment, however, it is VA that is unhappy with Congress.
VA Deputy Under Secretary for Economic Opportunity Curtis Coy testified about this very subject to Congress over a year ago. At that hearing he told them explicitly that if they passed the bill granting in-state tuition to all Post 9/11 GI Bill and Fry Scholarship beneficiaries that money would have to be appropriated to update VA’s education payment processing system. If they did not, the Veterans’ Benefits Administration would have to stop using a system on which they had spent roughly half a billion dollars.
