{"id":14139,"date":"2009-09-04T09:33:53","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T14:33:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=14139"},"modified":"2009-09-04T09:33:53","modified_gmt":"2009-09-04T14:33:53","slug":"gi-bill-hits-a-snag","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=14139","title":{"rendered":"GI Bill Hits a Snag"},"content":{"rendered":"

Greetings to all the folks goofing off at work on a Friday.\u00a0 My name’s Nixon<\/a> and I’m an ex-Navy guy who’s now posing as a hippie at an NGO in Thailand.\u00a0 Jonn asked me to scare off all the traffic over the weekend by guest blogging here while he’s in upstate NY and TSO is getting in touch with his inner adolescent by singing along to Sister Christian<\/a> by Night Ranger. Anyways, this first one is about the much touted GI Bill.<\/p>\n

The Obama administration has appointed a young gentleman named Matt Flavin as the White House Office of Veterans and Wounded Warrior Policy<\/a>. Not sure what the office actually does or how you fit that title on a business card, but fine by me. The more Iraq\/A-stan vets in the mix, the more likely we will shed this Timothy McVeigh meme that seems to dog us to this day. WaPo<\/a> states that Mr. Flavin is presumably in charge of making sure that the transition to the new GI Bill is going off without a hitch:<\/p>\n

Eight months into the Obama administration, Flavin’s fingerprints are on a range of policies expanding benefits to veterans of current conflicts. To ease the processing of claims at Veterans Affairs, Flavin is helping introduce an electronic medical records system. He is trying to smooth the implementation of the new GI Bill to grant more generous education benefits to veterans of Iraq, Afghanistan and other post-Sept. 11 conflicts. And he is crafting policy to better address post-traumatic stress disorder and brain injuries.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I hope he works fast, because despite the good intentions of the new GI Bill, the VA is backlogged up the ying-yang with claims. From the AP<\/a>:<\/p>\n

About two-thirds of the 67,000 remaining unprocessed claims were submitted only in the last 30 days. Claims are taking on average 28 days to be processed, and beneficiaries had been told to get them in at least a month ahead.<\/p>\n

However, that still leaves about 20,000 unprocessed claims that are more than 30 days old. Veterans groups said they’ll continue to monitor the backlog and hold the department to its promise to be caught up by next month.<\/p>\n

Keith Wilson, the department’s education service director, said much of the paperwork backlog may be from veterans simply filing to determine eligibility and not necessarily due housing checks. Any who are will get the full amount due by the Oct. 1 check period. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If I recall correctly during my college years, after tuition, rent, and books, I had exactly enough money in my bank account to buy a 6-pack of Natural Light and 2 Budget Gourmet TV Dinners at Ralph’s. College students do not have a lot of expendable cash and often count on scholarship money, loans, and (for vets) the GI Bill just to get by day to day. Alex Horton shares a lengthy post<\/a> about his turmoil in the process. I have a lot of nasty things to say about the Obama administration, but I don’t think there is a secret conspiracy to screw over veterans. However, Matt Flavin and the rest need to un-ass this bureaucratic entanglement or our college-bound vets are going to get boned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Greetings to all the folks goofing off at work on a Friday.\u00a0 My name’s Nixon and … GI Bill Hits a Snag<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":599,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/599"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}