As some lawmakers ponder a new GI Bill, 2,600 soldiers in Minnesota’s National Guard are returning home to discover they won’t receive benefits under the current GI Bill. Despite serving longer than any other ground combat unit in Iraq, they came up just short of qualifying for the GI Bill’s substantial educational benefits.

How short? One day.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

“It’s pretty much a slap in the face,” Anderson said. “I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership… once again failing the soldiers.”
Anderson’s orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

“Which would be allowing the soldiers an extra $500 to $800 a month,” Anderson said.

That money would help him pay for his master’s degree in public administration. It would help Anderson’s fellow platoon leader, John Hobot, pay for a degree in law enforcement.

“I would assume, and I would hope, that when I get back from a deployment of 22 months, my senior leadership in Washington, the leadership that extended us in the first place, would take care of us once we got home,” Hobot said.

Both Hobot and Anderson believe the Pentagon deliberately wrote orders for 729 days instead of 730. Now, six of Minnesota’s members of the House of Representatives have asked the Secretary of the Army to look into it — So have Senators Amy Klobuchar and Norm Coleman.

Now, I’m going to guess what happened here is this: The GI Bill was intended for men and women who serve during longer periods of enlistment, say 4 to 6 years. Under normal circumstances, troops from the National Guard wouldn’t be expected to serve anywhere near the time required to qualify. As we know, the Iraq war lasted quite a bit longer than the Bush administration expected.

Of course, the long war has provoked a serious budget crunch, serious enough that the unplanned expense of extending the GI Bill to thousands of unexpected beneficiaries isn’t economically feasible without Congress agreeing to front some extra money. No one in the military wants to pay them out of their current budget. So, what to do?

I know: How about we write the orders for only one day less than what’s required for GI Bill eligibility? The resulting uproar will force congress to come up with the extra cash, these soldiers will get their well-deserved money, and the Armed Forces won’t have look in the sofa for spare change just to do the right thing. And if Congress doesn’t come up with the money? Well, we can still support the troops with our magnetic yellow ribbons, I guess. Or our American flag lapel pins.

It’s kind of slimy isn’t it? But hear me roar, Congress. These dudes got to get paid.

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