VA reverses course, says veterans will receive full GI Bill benefits
After days of back-and-forth, the Department of Veterans Affairs has decided to fully reimburse veterans who may have been underpaid in delayed Forever GI Bill benefits
VA Secretary Robert Wilkie released a statement Thursday afternoon to “clear up any confusion.” Every post-9/ 11 GI Bill beneficiary will be fully paid for their housing benefits this year based on Forever GI Bill rates, he said.
Wilkie said he made that clear to the chairmen of the Senate and House veterans committees — Sen. Jimmy Isakson, R-Georgia, and Tennessee’s U.S. Rep. Phil Roe, R-Johnson City, respectively — and wanted to “reassure veterans and taxpayers that is indeed the case.”
“Although VA has encountered issues with implementing the Forever GI Bill on Congress’ timeline, we will work with lawmakers to ensure that — once VA is in a position to process education claims in accordance with the new law — each and every beneficiary will receive retroactively the exact benefits to which they are entitled under that law,” Wilkie said in his statement.
His decision comes after Paul Lawrence’s testimony during a House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs hearing and amid a day of back-and-forth from the VA over whether veterans would get fully reimbursed for the benefits.
Lawrence, the VA’s undersecretary for benefits, tried to dispute an NBC News report which said congressional staff members were told short-changed veterans might not be fully repaid.
“Each and every veteran on the post-9/11 GI Bill will be made 100 percent whole —retroactively if need be — for their housing benefits for this academic year based on the current uncapped (Department of Defense) rates, and beginning in spring 2020, we will be in a position to provide veterans with the new rates where applicable to meet the law known as the Forever GI Bill,” Lawrence told lawmakers.
But Lawrence later admitted that the agency does not plan to follow the current law to pay back veterans who were possibly short-changed, after he was pressed by Roe, who heads the committee.
The VA announced Wednesday that students are currently being paid housing allowances in accordance with the Department of Defense’s previous Basic Housing Allowance. The rates to comply with the new GI Bill won’t be in effect until December 2019 for the following spring semester.
Roe pointed out that the law was set to take effect in August 2018. There could be discrepancies in what students are getting paid under Defense Department rates compared to what they would’ve been paid under the Forever GI Bill, he said.
Lawrence said it is “not clear” what the difference will be after the law’s implementation.
The work to review those cases and iron out those discrepancies could cause undue burden on schools and the VA, according to Lawrence.
“What should we spend an extra hour on: processing things that yield veterans nothing, putting at risk the spring 2020 semester, or saying this doesn’t yield much and we’re going to move forward?” he told lawmakers.
“But if we follow the law as is, then you’ve got to go back and look,” Roe said. “It creates a lot of work, I realize that. We got to make sure that those students that started classes in the fall semester are going to be made whole ... as stated in the law in 2018.”
“We will seek to work with you and your staff to better understand whether that is in the interest of veterans given all the work (Roe) described and the potential low benefits of doing that quite frankly,” Lawrence said.
He said the VA will come back to the committee to possibly ask for a legislative change to the law’s effective date to December 2019.
“We want to make sure that those veterans get what they earned and what the law states,” Roe said, adding that he wants to work with the VA to see how many veterans were underpaid.
Forever GI Bill problems bring changes at VA
The hearing comes weeks after technology glitches delayed GI Bill payments to hundreds of thousands of veterans across the country, after a change in calculating housing allowances under the Forever GI Bill signed by President Donald Trump last year.
In Tennessee, officials estimated that nearly 9,000 veteran and military-affiliated students were impacted. Many reported they were forced into desperate financial situations.
The issues resulted in the reassignment this month of Robert Worley, the executive director of the VA’s educational services. It also led to the VA’s announcement on Wednesday that it would delay the housing changes until December 2019, while promising that retroactive payments would be made to those who didn’t receive the full amount they were owed.
VA spokesman Curt Cashour said in many cases, veterans currently being paid housing allowances in accordance with the DoD, are being paid a rate “equal or higher” than their current payment. But, if a student was overpaid due to the changes, the student will not be held liable for the debt.