Legislative News

Several years ago, Congress passed the Post 911 GI Bill. This bill was a huge win for AFSA and the other organizations within the Military Coalition. Although this bill provided vast improvments to pursue a civilian degree, there were many problems that were not addressed. One issue in particular is that students do not receive BAH when taking internet based classes regardless of the number of classes the individual is taking.

Representative Bob Filner, CA-51 introduced legislation in the 111th Congress in Feb 2009 to address this issue. Sady, we are running out of time to get this critical piece of legislation through before it dies when the 111th Congress is terminated.

If we want to see this benefit enacted, we need to get the message to Congress why this is important to our fellow servicemen. We need to communicate the following:

Many service members are forced to use the internet to attend college while on active duty due to mission requirements. Taking classes in this manner is second nature for many service members.

Military members tend to utilize internet based classes in conjunction with classroom courses at their assigned base. This ties them to a very limited number of schools offered at their home station. Once seperated from the military, the veteran is forced to stay at their current location, move to the local area of the school they are attending, or transfer their credits to another institution of learning. Any of these solutions can cause unnecessary hardships for the veteran including losing credits for courses already taken if they transfer to another school.

If a veteran stays in close proximetry to a military installation that has a local office for institution the veteran is current attending, the limited number of classroom classes can cause unnessary delays while the veteran waits for specific classes to be offered. This causes unnecessry delays for the veteran to obtain their degree.

Finally, and most important, a veteran's living expenses are not dependent upon if the person is taking a course at a brick and mortor school or taking the class online. The veteran still has to pay the rent or mortgage.

OK, so where do we start? Step 1 will start at Chapter 872's chapter meeting on 21 May. I'll provide the chapter with information about this bill and how they can contact their elected officials.  I will also pass this information onto the Division 89 legislative trustee for distribution through out the midwest.

There are currently 26 co-sponsors for this bill. Our mission is to get more co-sponsors in the House and to get a Senator to introduce a companion bill in the Senate. This will only happen if we can mobilize a lot of people, i.e. military members, veterans, spouses, parents, or anyone you can get to contact Congress. It isn't going to happen without you taking action.

If we can't make this happen this year, we will have to start over from scratch with the 112th Congress.