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Situation Normal
All Fucked Up.
It's possible this isn't, quite, as bad as it looks but it looks pretty bad.
The GI Bill is pro-rating my months. If, as happened in Dec, the entire month isn't used, my stipend is reduced. So, for the month of Dec (and probably for Sept.), I got all of 400 dollars. I say probably Sept. because I don't know, and by the time they caught up to me, I had an advance in the bank, a books payment, and a job, so it's possible there was an extra 400, when I was thinking it was a missing 1,100.
Let's recap some of the joys of the system. I was in the Guard, so I wasn't, automatically, entitled to the GI Bill. I was lucky enough to be deployed, and I did 14 months active. That entitled me to it, but at a reduced rate; 60 percent.
That's 60 percent of the stipend, and 60 percent of the tution to a UC School (since that's the most costly state school in Calif.). Ok, 60 percent of a UC tuition is about 7,600 bucks (the sent me a nice note telling me that's he amount they were setting aside for me).
But, not so fast. It seems the bill was written to say I was entitled to 60 percent of my tution, and the most they would pay was 7,600 bucks. My tuiton for the previous quarter was about 350 bucks. I thought I was golden. Nope. They paid 60 percent of it. I paid the balance. The extra 7,000 they have set aside... they intend to keep.
That, by the way, only screws the reservist, and those people who were on active duty on 11 Sept, 2001, and let their contracts expire before they had served 36 more months. Every one else, every singe Regular Army troop who enlisted after That Tuesday... full ride. They might have been doing easy duty stateside, as a clerk in personnel at Ft. Jackson, they get the full bennies.
The guys who were deployed for 14 months, almost always to a combat zone, who lost homes, businesses, spouses... they get cut rate benefits.
Frustration top of that, each quarter has to be certified, which can't be done until the quarter starts, on the off chance a vet will sign up, and then choose to not go to class. The person who does that, was ill for the first two weeks of this quarter. I have not seen a check since the 400 they sent me on New Year's Eve.
And now we come to the meat of it. This isn't the Montgomery GI Bill, which was a defined benefit: one paid in and a set amount of money was paid out. Until the money was gone, they kept paying.
No, this is a timed benefit. I have 36 months of stipend; i.e. 4 academic years. Even if they are saving the dribs and drabs that doesn't do me a lot of good I ought to be able to get my degree in that time. What am I going to do, apply to an OTD, or Ph.D program, just to get the extra time?
And if they aren't saving the dribs and drabs... well this year it looks as though they will keep about 2 1/2 months of the time from Sept. to June. I'll be a full-time student (with a 13 unit average, over three quarters). I have to keep my grades up, or they take the money away. I have to make the time to study.
And I have to make up about 25 percent of my expected income.
Which pisses me off. I'm not getting a handout. I earned this. I had to fight like hell to get it (twice). I got told this wasn't something I should be given (by that spineless asshole McCain, who said we couldn't afford this GI Bill, not because of the money, but because it would provide incentives for mid-career NCOs to leave the service; rather than do more tours in Iraq... what do you call a guy on his third tour? Divorced... that wouldn't have anything to do with the mid-career losses? Nah, didn't think so).
So I'm talking to my congresswoman's office. Right now we're playing phone tag, but I am pissed.
And broke. Sur la Table is decent work, and they like me, and I am getting a fair number of hours, but 20 hours a week is a big drain, and it only pays 8 bucks an hour... you can do the math. That was enough... on top of my stipend, but cut that from 9,900 a year to 7,400, and that's starts to get a little tight.
Hell, it feels a lot tight.
It's possible this isn't, quite, as bad as it looks but it looks pretty bad.
The GI Bill is pro-rating my months. If, as happened in Dec, the entire month isn't used, my stipend is reduced. So, for the month of Dec (and probably for Sept.), I got all of 400 dollars. I say probably Sept. because I don't know, and by the time they caught up to me, I had an advance in the bank, a books payment, and a job, so it's possible there was an extra 400, when I was thinking it was a missing 1,100.
Let's recap some of the joys of the system. I was in the Guard, so I wasn't, automatically, entitled to the GI Bill. I was lucky enough to be deployed, and I did 14 months active. That entitled me to it, but at a reduced rate; 60 percent.
That's 60 percent of the stipend, and 60 percent of the tution to a UC School (since that's the most costly state school in Calif.). Ok, 60 percent of a UC tuition is about 7,600 bucks (the sent me a nice note telling me that's he amount they were setting aside for me).
But, not so fast. It seems the bill was written to say I was entitled to 60 percent of my tution, and the most they would pay was 7,600 bucks. My tuiton for the previous quarter was about 350 bucks. I thought I was golden. Nope. They paid 60 percent of it. I paid the balance. The extra 7,000 they have set aside... they intend to keep.
That, by the way, only screws the reservist, and those people who were on active duty on 11 Sept, 2001, and let their contracts expire before they had served 36 more months. Every one else, every singe Regular Army troop who enlisted after That Tuesday... full ride. They might have been doing easy duty stateside, as a clerk in personnel at Ft. Jackson, they get the full bennies.
The guys who were deployed for 14 months, almost always to a combat zone, who lost homes, businesses, spouses... they get cut rate benefits.
Frustration top of that, each quarter has to be certified, which can't be done until the quarter starts, on the off chance a vet will sign up, and then choose to not go to class. The person who does that, was ill for the first two weeks of this quarter. I have not seen a check since the 400 they sent me on New Year's Eve.
And now we come to the meat of it. This isn't the Montgomery GI Bill, which was a defined benefit: one paid in and a set amount of money was paid out. Until the money was gone, they kept paying.
No, this is a timed benefit. I have 36 months of stipend; i.e. 4 academic years. Even if they are saving the dribs and drabs that doesn't do me a lot of good I ought to be able to get my degree in that time. What am I going to do, apply to an OTD, or Ph.D program, just to get the extra time?
And if they aren't saving the dribs and drabs... well this year it looks as though they will keep about 2 1/2 months of the time from Sept. to June. I'll be a full-time student (with a 13 unit average, over three quarters). I have to keep my grades up, or they take the money away. I have to make the time to study.
And I have to make up about 25 percent of my expected income.
Which pisses me off. I'm not getting a handout. I earned this. I had to fight like hell to get it (twice). I got told this wasn't something I should be given (by that spineless asshole McCain, who said we couldn't afford this GI Bill, not because of the money, but because it would provide incentives for mid-career NCOs to leave the service; rather than do more tours in Iraq... what do you call a guy on his third tour? Divorced... that wouldn't have anything to do with the mid-career losses? Nah, didn't think so).
So I'm talking to my congresswoman's office. Right now we're playing phone tag, but I am pissed.
And broke. Sur la Table is decent work, and they like me, and I am getting a fair number of hours, but 20 hours a week is a big drain, and it only pays 8 bucks an hour... you can do the math. That was enough... on top of my stipend, but cut that from 9,900 a year to 7,400, and that's starts to get a little tight.
Hell, it feels a lot tight.
no subject
I'm trying to form coherent thoughts, and put it into perspective as both a National Guard Soldier and the spouse of an Active Duty Soldier. I see both sides of the coin, all the time, and while I understand your gripes, I also don't agree that during an average four year enlistment, even with deployment, a reservist does the same amount of work an active duty soldier does and so, I'm not sure that we should get the *exact* same benefits.
(I'm leaving aside the reserve soldeir who does six deployments in four years and his family starves because he lost a lucrative construction company because his brother couldn't run a paper route effectively. Those soldiers are rare.)
no subject
Second, the issue of work, no, the active duty soldier, even the one who stays stateside, does more days on duty in the 36 months required to get the full benefit.
They also get a lot more support, and they tend to have a lot less to lose. They don't see a loss of pay from being deployed. They don't have to pay for storage of goods if they have to put things in a locker when they go (heck, at Bragg they just put a seal on the door, and you come back to the barracks you left).
On the one hand the time of the active duty soldier is greater, on the other the sacrifices on the RC soldier are. They also get this, in effect, for free. They don't have to be deployed. They enlist, and it's included. Break a leg and get discharged from basic, and they get the full-tretement. The reservist has to deploy, and deploy, and deploy again. If they don't get activated to three years of federal time, they don't get the same benefits. One works more on deployments than one does in garrison; even if the garrison duty is Korea. So the equivalence isn't quite there, even at the level of time in uniform.
Then there's the issue of ability to use. If I had a mortgage, or more rent to pay, or dependents... there is no way I could afford to take advantage of the bill.
The young person, who joined up between 18-21, leaves the service with a lot less of that, so the stipend (which is going to be about the same as their base pay at separation) is a lot easier to get by on.
And part of it is emotional. I keep hearing about how much the Reserves and the Guard mean, about how it's all one Army/Navy/Air Force, etc., but it's not. Not when it come to how the recompense gets handed out. Drop everything, and go, when they tell you, where they tell you (in 16 years in the guard, I spent almost six of them away from home, two weeks here, six weeks there, 18 months in one stint, 14 in another, it adds up), take pay cuts when they deploy you, but be refused Army Emergency Funds when the money doesn't come; because you aren't active.
I don't regret it, but there are times I feel a little bitter, and a bit used. I'd mind the sense of being used less, if it wasn't going on still. I've looked, the little hits (like not getting to use all of that 7,600 bucks, unless I can afford to go to a school which charges 10,000, or more, a year) aren't being mentioned.
No, I am told that I get, "60 percent of the hightest in-state tuition at a state school," as if I was ever going to be able to use it in a meaningful way (the choices for my degree are a Cal-State School, which means I'll not get the full-value of my 7,600, and have to cough up a couple of grand a year to fill the gap, or USC, which I can't afford, even if I wanted that much debt, I don't know that I could get the loans for the $80,000 it would cost) and there are photo-ops, with guys who opposed this beaming at the new students. Well that makes me cranky too.
no subject
We won't even go into the issues of back pay, and scrambled rank.
no subject
no subject
I propose the benefit be based a combination of:
- how much time one spends deployed and
- how much time one spends doing military work not deployed.
Whether one is reserve or active duty should be irrelevant. The Reserve used to be a pretty cushy deal, during the 20 year period in which we didn't fight big wars. This is no longer the case and the rules have not caught up with current reality.
I keep hearing about how much the Reserves and the Guard mean, about how it's all one Army/Navy/Air Force, etc., but it's not.
I can't figure out a gentle way to write this: You believed that? I've seen it or been close to it from three sides (enlisted, officer, officer reserve). Taint the same at all. I was also shocked at how much work was required from a reserve officer outside of the "two days/month, two weeks/year."
If the brass are really so concerned about the cost of the educational benefit of the GI bill, why the hell make it transferable?!?
no subject
- how much time one spends deployed and
- how much time one spends doing military work not deployed.
Nope. First, on a practical matter the accounting would be a nightmare. Second, that's not fair. What counts as deployed... boots on the ground overseas? What about the reserve unit who were called up in 2002 to guard Dugway, and spent 24 months standing picket?
Third, all work supports the effort. It can be argued the training time an M-Day soldier does is different from the training time an AD soldier does, but even that's a stretch. One of the things I saw, again, and again and again, from Germany, to Korea, to Bragg, to The Box, was the shocked looks on the faces of "Regular Army" soldiers at the RC soldiers' competence (often at levels above their own... the look on 1SG O'Neal's face when the chemical siren went off and all the NG guys, who had never seen the new MOPP gear before it was issued to them two-weeks before, were in it properly, and fast; and the 15 percent of his troops who did it wrong, well it was something to be seen; and not so bad if you were one of the NG soldiers).
I keep hearing about how much the Reserves and the Guard mean, about how it's all one Army/Navy/Air Force, etc., but it's not.
I can't figure out a gentle way to write this: You believed that? I've seen it or been close to it from three sides (enlisted, officer, officer reserve). Taint the same at all. I was also shocked at how much work was required from a reserve officer outside of the "two days/month, two weeks/year."
Believed it... not completely. But with this thing, it looked like a little more than just lip service. About the last time one can get away with two days/two weeks is the moment one pins stripes/bars. Even that's no guarantee. I had extra dutiesas an E-4.
no subject
Crazy(what are the sharing rights? if any?)Soph