Hearing of the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Military Advocacy and Beneficiary Groups
Interview
Hearing of the Military Personnel Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee - Military Advocacy and Beneficiary Groups
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REP. VIC SNYDER (D-AR): Thank you, Madam Chairman.
Ms. Moakler, was it you that mentioned the Beyond the Yellow Ribbon Campaign? I think it was.
MS. MOAKLER: Yes, sir.
REP. SNYDER: And the funding of it. And I don't know if you saw yesterday when Secretary Gates testified with Admiral Mullen before the House Armed Services full committee, I asked him about it and then Representative Kline brought it up also about the funding for it. And we are, as you know, we authorize it in the National Guard we haven't seen any money up for it.
I'm optimistic that we will see that funding come available through the supplemental process over the next few months, but we all need to follow that along. Mostly, I think, the Pentagon is committed to seeing that that is funded and recommend -- and understands the value of it. And one of Secretary Gates' staff members grabbed me at a break in the hearing and he had all the numbers down and you were kind of looking for and it's just we got to see the supplemental process folks. So I'm optimistic that will happen, but it's something that we all put together and need to follow.
MS. MOAKLEY: It's a great program. It was so successful in Minnesota. And we certainly would like to see that enacted in all the other states and territories.
REP. SNYDER: Yeah.
MS. MOAKLEY: To help those families.
REP. SNYDER: Representative Kline was a very -- excuse me for my voice -- was a strong advocate of that and is on this subcommittee also.
I wanted to ask to spend some time, further time on this GI Bill issue. And I just came from Secretary Peake's, former Lieutenant General now Secretary General -- now Secretary of Veteran's Affairs, Peake his first budget hearing before the Veteran's Affairs Committee. And in his opening statement, Chairman Filner talked about one of his goals for this session of Congress is, I forget how he phrased it, but a GI Bill for, you know, this era, he wants to really modernize the bill. And we're seeing a lot of the polls out there. Senator Webb has the most far reaching, which I think would be great which goes back to the days of right after World War II, I think representing Bobby Scott as the -- (inaudible) --, you've mentioned different ideas for the GI Bill.
My concern I have about this is we're getting back to maybe where we were a few years ago as we were all going to come up with great ideas. The problem we're going to have is the one that we have in the jurisdiction Reserve component-active component; one's come out of Veteran's Affairs Department and that committee and one's coming out of the Pentagon and this committee. And the two bodies have different ideas. The Congress is in agreement about it, but the Pentagon is very clear they see the Reserve component GI Bill as being a management issue. They don't see it as being a reintegration issue. And I think you make a very strong argument that even for a Reserve component member who comes back and stays in the Reserve, that they've been in a combat situation for 12 or 15 months, it clearly is a reintegration issue.
I also think it's an issue of investment in people. People deserve it, particularly if the active component veterans are getting it. And so I have this fear that, you know, last year I think we made or last defense bill it was just signed by the president a few weeks ago, we made progress on this Reserve component issue, but not nearly as much as we ought to. We haven't dealt with the disparity and benefits, the actual amounts. We haven't met -- haven't dealt at all with the disparity between what the GI Bill pays versus what it cost for a four-year education is. We haven't dealt with the $1,200. I mean, there's a lot of issues we haven't dealt with.
I think we're kind of getting in a situation now we're all coming up with these ideas. The bottom line is, I think, that if we don't deal with this conflict in jurisdiction between the Pentagon and Department of Veteran's Affairs, none of these things are going to go very far. And so it comes back to this idea of the bill that staff here work on a lot and it's very complicated trying to merge these things together because until it gets under one jurisdiction, I think we'll continue to hear from people in the Pentagon it's a management tool, our reenlistment is good for Reserve component, we don't need to change that benefit.
And some of you may know from the past with Secretary Dominquez, who's a very nice guy, but I mean, he actually, I kind of backed him into a corner --and said that if we could keep -- were you there Colonel Strobridge? -- and said if we reduced by 50 percent and realistically stayed the same, you're okay with that? If we can reduce it by 80 percent? I mean he had to acknowledge, yes, he was because as a management tool, if the reenlistment rates for the Reserve hold the same means you don't have to change the GI Bill, I think it misses the point of the GI bill.
So I've rambled on too much for this, but my basic question is, you don't have concerns that you don't have concerns that we now are getting a lot of new ideas about the GI bill, but if we don't deal with this issue of jurisdiction for the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs being separated, we're not going to make much progress on the GI bill? Colonel Strobridge, if you don't mind.
COL. STROBRIDGE: As I know you know, we strongly supported that initiative last year. We agree with you that that's a fundamental underpinning, and very frankly that's what we thought we were going to get last year rather than -- we were hoping for the reserve transition, but we were kind of surprised to get the reserve transition and not the consolidation. We agree with you that that's a key issue.
From our standpoint, there are so many initiatives out there, we would agree with almost any of them that the issue is what can be done, you know, we're sort of in the same boat we were when you asked us to prioritize things. We'll take just about anything that's progress because there are so many problems. I can't think of too many bills out there that we wouldn't support and whatever works out to be the lowest common denominator that Congress will support, you'll find our enthusiastic support for.
REP. SNYDER: It's going to be hard, for my time is up, and when we go back around we'll go at this again -- but it's going to be hard for us to have a Senator Webb-type bill or a comprehensive Filner-type bill without bringing this together because we could do Senator Webb's bill, but I bet it would not include Reserve components, the way the jurisdiction currently is. In the next round I'll pursue this further.
MR. STROBRIDGE: Madam Chairman, would you indulge me for 15 seconds to fix a grievous omission in a previous answer?
REP. DAVIS: Sure.
MR. STROBRIDGE: My conscience is really bothering me. (Laughter.) You talked about prioritizing. One of the really important things is the Guard and Reserve retirement system where we did it prospectively, and we didn't give credit for those years of repeated tours in Iraq that have already been served. That's a huge priority.
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REP. VIC SNYDER (D-CA): Thank you. Ms. Moakler, I appreciate your attention today to children of our military families. A couple of weeks ago a family member returned from his second tour in Iraq; he's Air Force. His tour was a four month tour for the second time; both times he's gone, his wife's been pregnant, so this time when he returned we were all at the airport with balloons and signs, and his little toddler was out there, I think was four years old. Maybe five, I'm embarrassed I can't remember. But, you know, when you see people come off the plane, the husband and wife hug and the congratulations and all; that moment when that little boy went over to be with his daddy, I almost felt like that was a private moment, it was so poignant, that I felt like -- now I didn't mind him giving kisses to his wife -- but I felt like that moment was a little boy who was just so private and so important that it really brought home to me how important those relationships are and how important they are to families. Anyway, I appreciate it, that's a long way of saying that I appreciate your attention to families.
I want to go back to this issue of the GI bill, and Mr. Bowers maybe give you a chance, and anyone else that wants to comment. I've got a question I'm saying from this side of the table, too. But Mr. Bowers if you want to comment on the issue of the GI bill and its jurisdiction and anything else you want to talk about because you mentioned that in your discussions also.
MR. BOWERS: As I mentioned before, the GI bill is something that we're going to be really focusing on this year, it's one of our top priorities. I can tell you that probably about 80 percent of our membership that we're even talking to has a tremendously difficult time with getting through college. I link that to the amount of deployments that individuals are using, and we do stand by, we would love to see a picture perfect homecoming GI bill, someone similar to S-22, Senator Webb's upcoming GI bill for the 21st century, and I attribute that to a partnership that we have with the VSW where we took Iraq and Afghanistan veteran members and also the VSW members who had served in the Vietnam War and met with different offices and said I served three tours, cumulative of three and a half years active duty, next to the Vietnam veteran who served roughly one year.
And then we compared how much each of us paid by the numbers per college, and the varying difference were incredible. And so we do stand by that we would love to see it updated to at least what it once was, to be more efficient. And the challenge you're going to have your membership has active component members and reserve component members; I think the challenge you're going to have is what are you going to do when the either on the veterans side or able to deal with the active component veterans and raise that GI bill benefit.
If we are able to do that, I think the great likelihood is that it will be difficult for the reserve component benefits to follow through this committee because we already have budget issues with the guard through the present day proposal and how we fund things, or to play catch up in the reserve component. And some of us would think that would be the first step, and it just seems like this issue of the jurisdiction, I mean I applaud the monetary goal you stated, but I don't think it affects the counting as we've got some difficult terrain to get through anyway, and the deal with the jurisdiction is making it even harder. Have you thought through this issue of reserve component versus active component?
We have, and we have often looked at the idea of recodification of it through title 38, and seeing if that is the most effective measure, and that's still something that we're still looking at to see if that would be something that would be beneficial. I know that if we do so, we don't see the GI Bill specifically as a retention tool, because if you serve four years versus 16 years, your benefits are still the same. So when we hear of that debate, that many times comes up, and we don't know if that's exactly the real issue. I think the only people that I've actually seen the GI bill as the reserve component as only a retention tool, is only a very small group of some high ranking civilians in the Pentagon. I think that almost everybody else does not agree with that.
REP. SNYDER: I wanted to, before my time runs out, to put this on the table. Will someone give me my annual update on fresh produce?
(Laughter.)
MR. : I think your original interest in fresh produce stemmed from a personal experience in witnessing mold in that particular category and how that was treated in a particular commissary; I'm under the belief--
REP. SNYDER: Actually that's not true, if I may correct you. It came from a hearing here. I think it was a Marine gunnery sergeant who had just come back from overseas and somebody asked him if you're having problems, if he'd heard from his family. And he said my wife thinks the produce is bad. So then a week or two later, I went out to Whitlock (ph) Air Force Base and looked at their produce, and it was worse than what his wife thought. But it started right there at that table, in fact he was sitting right where you are Mr. Becker.
MR. : Well I can't forgo the opportunity to let you know how much of an impact you've had on the commissary system -- (laughter) -- it's been one of the greatest success stories of the last couple of years, I think is the tremendous progress that's been made in the area of produce. Sales prove it, customer satisfaction proves it, so in the long run Congress has touched the commissary system once again.
REP. SNYDER: Thank you.
REP. (MR.) : If I may, if the gentleman would yield, that you have not had similar success in annual interest in tattoos.
(Laughter.)
It's not impacting the tattoo industry at all.
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REP. SNYDER: I'm going to feel sorry for this panel, I'll tell you what. We've had two hours rounds of questions, a call for votes, extensive testimony; if I have any further questions I'll submit them for the record, but thank you all as I tried to communicate in my opening statement.
What you do, and Colonel you mentioned your record through organization to try to prioritize and work with us, and I want to underscore that with just you talking. You did that and all of your organizations have been leaders and very helpful to me and I think I can confidently say to everyone on this panel. So keep up the great work. Thank you.
REP. DAVIS: Thank you. Dr. (Snyder ?), you did say you have a question, please go ahead.
REP. SNYDER: It's really not a question. This topic came up on the other side of the veterans committee today, in that there's been some discussion about the New York Times series on veterans who'd come back and committed crimes. This whole issue, how you discuss this issue has become something important and I, in the spirit of time, that I'll just say that we can talk about divorce rates and all those kinds of things, but the bottom line is that the great majority of people who come back do very, very well. The problem is that from the outside it may be appearing that they're feeling very, very well and they may just be miserable.
They may be employed well, they're good with kids, they're doing their job, but life is not the same, and I think what we're talking about is how you alleviate in the spirit of friendship human misery. The people, the great majority who are functioning reasonably well, and I don't know how we get around this issue being advocates for additional mental health services without dramatizing it, but that's what we've been trying to do here for the last year or two or three.
REP. DAVIS: Thank you. And I would say that I believe that we will be having a whole panel on mental health as we follow up through the year, so we will have more focus on that. Ms. Shea-Porter you had a question or comment?
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