WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) detailed bipartisan legislation to expand educational opportunities for post-9/11 student veterans and restore GI benefits for veterans who attended now failed for-profit colleges. The bill, which has passed out of the House, also passed of the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs last week and is currently awaiting a full vote in the Senate. 

Brown helped secure a provision of the bill that would restore GI benefits for veterans who attended ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges, both of which failed and left veterans with meaningless degrees or without a degree to show for their time. Brown has been working to restore benefits for veterans who were defrauded since last year. The bill also allows veterans to use their GI benefits for life, ending the current 15-year limit imposed on veterans to use the benefits they earned.

“Too often, restrictive rules and time limits prevent our veterans or their family members from using the benefits they’ve earned serving our nation,” said Brown. “It’s pretty simple: if you serve our country and uniform and earn these benefits, you should be able to use them whenever makes sense for you and your family. At a time when it doesn’t seem like there’s much cooperation across the partisan divide, this package to help our veterans is a major bipartisan accomplishment and an example of what we can get done when we work together.”

Brown was joined on the call by Benjamin Fitzgerald, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, who is currently using GI benefits as he attends Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) in Cleveland. 

“This will benefit me, as well as other veterans. According to the Washington Post, in 2014, approximately 52% of veterans use their GI Bill benefits. With this extension, I believe that number will increase. The removal of the timeframe usage will also present working professional veterans with continuing education and professional development opportunities beyond the 15-year period,” said Fitzgerald.

The bill also includes a provision based on Brown’s Yellow Ribbon Improvement Act, cosponsored by U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Tom Tillis (R-NC), to expand eligibility for the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Yellow Ribbon Program to spouses and children of servicemembers who died in combat. The Yellow Ribbon Program – which helps students avoid out-of-pocket tuition and fees for education programs that cost more than their post-9/11 GI Bill benefits – is currently only available to veterans and spouses and children of servicemembers. Brown’s bill would expand Yellow Ribbon to spouses and children of servicemembers who died in combat.

The bill also takes an important step toward fulfilling Brown’s call to secure priority enrollment so veterans, servicemembers and dependents using GI benefits can get into the classes they need to complete their degree in time. This bill ensures that the GI Bill Comparison Tool lets veterans know which schools offer priority enrollment when they are choosing their school. Brown will continue working to require priority enrollment for veterans using GI benefits at all schools that offer priority enrollment to students.

In addition to Brown’s provisions, the legislation:

  • Eliminates the arbitrary 15-year period within which a veteran can use their GI bill benefits. Brown helped pass legislation into law last Congress to extend this time period so veterans and their spouses would have more time to use their educational benefits.
  • Provides GI Bill eligibility for reservists mobilized under selected reserve orders for preplanned missions in support of the combatant commands or in response to a major disaster or emergency;
  • Provides GI Bill eligibility for reservists undergoing medical care;
  • Provides full GI Bill benefits for Purple Heart recipients regardless of length of service; and
  • Increases GI Bill payments by $2,300 per year for veterans with less than 12 months of active service.

While Brown applauded the legislation to expand education opportunities for veterans, he also said more must be done to protect veterans from being abused by fraudulent for-profit colleges. For-profit colleges are incentivized to target veterans, often with deceptive and misleading marketing and recruitment pitches, because of a loophole in federal law that allows them to take advantage of veterans’ education benefits.

Under the 90/10 rule, for-profit education companies can receive no more than 90 percent of their operating revenue from federal student loans and grants. However, U.S. Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs education benefits are exempt from this rule. The Senator has cosponsored legislation in the past, including last Congress’s Military and Veterans Education Protection Act – which would close this loophole. He has also introduced legislation which would hold for-profit schools and their executives accountable for misleading students and a bill which would prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars for advertising, marketing, and recruitment – because taxpayer money should be used for educating students, not for producing glossy brochures or television ads.

This week, the Senate also passed Brown’s bipartisan legislation, the Veterans Appeals Improvement and Modernization Act of 2017, to help speed up the appeals process for veterans seeking assistance from the Veterans Administration (VA). The bill will now go to the House for approval and then to President Trump to be signed into law.  

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