Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act, 2008

Floor Speech

MILITARY CONSTRUCTION AND VETERANS AFFAIRS APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2008 -- (Senate - May 20, 2008)

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Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague, Senator Hagel, and I thank my distinguished partner in the Senate, Mr. Webb. We have known each other for a very long time, over 30 years. When I was in the Pentagon, we were associated together at that time. He had a long and distinguished career in the U.S. Marine Corps and following that in the Department of Defense in two very senior--including Secretary of the Navy--positions of civilian leadership. He has shown that same leadership from the day he crossed the threshold of the Senate, that this is his No. 1 priority. And how pleased and, indeed, humbled I am to join him and my good friend, Senator Hagel, in making this possible.

What we are trying to do, very simply, is to enable this generation of young men and women to have, as nearly as possible, the same benefits as former generations--most specifically, the generation from World War II and the Korean War generation of which I was a part.

Both of these gentlemen are highly decorated combat veterans. I have a less significant career in the service. But all three of us bring our own experience to bear on thinking this is essential for this generation who is going out and fighting as courageously as any servicemember in the history of this country and, in fact, perhaps with an added measure of courage because they are fighting an enemy that is so difficult to define, an enemy that does not have any state-sponsored nation attached to it, which is the form of the terrorism today.

I wish to thank the distinguished chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who has graced us on this floor for the purpose of listening in on this debate, for guiding it through the current supplemental bill in the Senate, and including Senator Webb's bill in it. Indeed, I saw Senator Murray here and Senator Inouye, who both helped us get that done.

Now, much has been said by my colleagues about how we are trying to bring up the level of funding for the GI bill from the current existing Montgomery GI bill.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record this document which traces the history of what is known as the Pell Grant Program.

There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

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Mr. WARNER. That is a very fine program enabling individuals who are qualified to go to colleges and universities all across America--all across America--to any college or university that accepts them, to obtain a grant from the United States of America to help him or her with their tuition and other expenses.

This is the interesting thing. The program was initiated in 2000, but I use as a benchmark the year 2001. There were 4.8 million individuals who accessed this program. The Congress appropriated $8.7 billion to defer their expenses. Fast forwarding from 2001 until 2009, the total request is as follows: roughly, a 20-percent increase in the number of individuals going. It goes from 4.8 million to 5.7 million, a little under 1 million. Now here is the astonishing thing. The amount of money Congress appropriates for the 2009 class of 5.7 million is $18.9 million.

Mr. WEBB. Will the Senator yield?

Mr. WARNER. Yes.

Mr. WEBB. My understanding of the program is that would be $18 billion.

Mr. WARNER. I thank the Senator for correcting me. In the year 2009, it is $18.9 billion. That is over a 100-percent increase, keeping up with inflation, keeping up with added expenses. But that is not the case with the existing GI bill. Although there has been a CPI adjustment, it doesn't compare to how Congress has treated the category, a well-deserving category, of the Pell grants. So this is essentially what we are trying to do.

My colleagues, the three of us, have worked together on the question of transferability. I wish to go back and acquaint the Senate with some history. I was chairman in 2001 of the Armed Services Committee, and I worked with a distinguished former colleague, Senator Max Cleland. He introduced, along with myself, on May 23, 2001, an amendment on the ability of a service person, after stipulating periods of time, to have some transferability to his family. The cosponsors, at that time, of the original amendment were Senators Bingaman, Dayton, Kennedy, Levin, and myself. I was the only Republican. There were several other Senators, four more. I was the only Republican who stepped up at that time. Later it became a bipartisan effort. In the evolution of events that year, we marked it up. But here is the interesting thing. On June 28, 2001, in the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, at a full committee hearing, there was no markup or no action taken on the bill. So then we decided, on the Armed Services Committee, we would act. In September of 2001, our bill was accepted by the full Senate and became law on December 28, 2001.

I pay my respect to those who formulated the concept of transferability originally in the Senate. It is the law today. I will send to the desk later today an amendment, which Senator Webb, Senator Hagel, and I worked on. We are joined by two other original cosponsors, Senator Levin, current chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Akaka, current chairman of the Veterans' Affairs Committee. This amendment will be filed at the desk this afternoon. We are going to make a technical adjustment to it. The purpose of this amendment is to provide a 2-year pilot program of transferability. We track as closely as possible the original law I recited that was enacted on December 28, 2001. The details will be provided to the full Senate when we file the amendment.

Essentially, we are asking an individual to complete his or her first 4-year term of enlistment and then, if they enlist for another 6 years, there is a vesting over a period of time of the full transferability of their benefits, as a sequence of time, to their family.

In the letter from the Secretary of Defense to the Senate, which talked about the need for transferability--and I am not sure at that time whether he was referring to the existing law or a new law--he said: ``Transferability supports military families, thereby enhancing retention.''

There it is. We are meeting the Secretary of Defense's letter to the Senate expressing the need for this transferability.

In my career, winding up 30 years in the Senate, I can't think of a piece of legislation in which I have had a greater emotional involvement. I am so pleased to share it with my good friend, the junior Senator from Virginia, and my friend from Nebraska. As I said when we first began to debate this bill, with a deep sense of humility, it is highly unlikely I would have ever achieved the opportunity to come to the Senate had it not been for the GI bill given to me by the United States in return for modest service in the last year of World War II and then a second period of active duty service during the Korean War, this time in the Marine Corps. I feel it so strongly in my heart. I don't know of any time I have felt more strongly the need to do something than this today.

Through the years, I have been to Iraq many times, Afghanistan. Throughout the intervening period, I visited military bases and spent as much time as I could with the men and women of the Armed Forces today. Each of us does the same thing, works with our military. On Monday, I was privileged to go into the State that Senator Webb and I are privileged to represent. We worked together to get funding in years past--and he is supporting it today--to build a new armory for the National Guard in Virginia, a famous regiment that fought in World War I and World War II. Members of that regiment were the first to go in on D-Day. They fought subsequently. I felt at that time that we are doing the right thing with this bill, taking care of those future guardsmen and reservists and active-duty individuals. This is the right thing for the Senate to do.

I understand there are honest differences of viewpoints and approaches. That is true with all legislation. Other colleagues have put in a different bill. It had a section on transferability. In some ways, it tracked what is existing law but not in the way we are doing this. This amendment, this bill, if amended, will bring forward existing law, incorporate it into the underlying amendment sponsored by Senator Webb and ourselves, and that will become, hopefully, at some point in time the new law that will govern future benefits of our GIs and sailors, airmen and marines. We file it today because I do not know exactly how this supplemental will go through. I don't know if there will be a window of opportunity put on it. If there is, we will exercise that opportunity. But if it is not, we are going to, as a team, bring it to the attention of the Armed Services Committee in the context of the annual authorization bill, which I presume will be done just before the Fourth of July recess.

We will affix to it that bill so it will eventually be amending the underlying bill, which I hope becomes law very soon as a component of the supplemental process now being undertaken by the Senate and the House.

Again, I salute my colleague from Virginia and my colleague from Nebraska. We have been here together. We have shared many opportunities to do something such as this together but none as important as this one.

I yield the floor.

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