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Senate to add GI Bill family transfer option

Supporters of the GI Bill for the 21st Century said Tuesday they will amend their veterans benefits proposal to include granting service members the right to transfer benefits to family members as a re-enlistment bonus if that change will reduce Bush administration opposition to their plan.

Sen. John Warner, R-Va., the former Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, said he will sponsor the amendment that would expand a limited test that offered GI Bill transfer rights to troops re-enlisting in critical specialties.

Warner, whose support for improving veterans education benefits has been critical in pushing the measure to the top of the congressional agenda, also said that if the Senate fails in its effort to include GI Bill legislation as an amendment to the war supplemental funding bill, he and other co-sponsors would move to attach the legislation, sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., to the 2009 defense authorization bill.

White House and Pentagon officials have made GI Bill transfer rights one of their important bottom lines as they negotiate with Congress on details for improving education benefits. They say helping troops pay for the college education of their families would encourage them to stay in the military for a career and reduce their own incentive to leave service to attend college.

The amendment Warner is offering, which has the support of transferability skeptics such as Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee chairman, is not at all what the Pentagon has been seeking.

The Pentagon plan calls for all service members who are eligible for GI Bill benefits to be able to transfer half of their entitlement to a spouse or children after six years of service and to be able to transfer all of their benefits after 12 years of service, which defense officials said would be strong encouragement to remain in the military.

Warner is talking about a two-year extension of a test program that gives people who are re-enlisting a choice between a bonus or the right to transfer GI Bill benefits to a family member. The services control who is eligible, so they could extend the program beyond the few critical occupations that have been offered the option.

Akaka said collecting more data on the retention value of transferability of benefits is important before making it a permanent benefit.

“I have consistently stated that I believe that transferability can be an important retention tool for the military, especially the option of offering transferability to those veterans that the military needs to retain for longer periods of time,” Akaka said. “However, I have not seen any data that demonstrates the retention value of the transferability option.”