Protections for Student Veterans Act

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 5603, as amended, the Protections for Student Veterans Act.

This bill would protect student veterans who have to withdraw from a course of education under the GI Bill if they are called up for Active Duty or for training. This change would protect students from receiving a poor grade or an incomplete while they are doing their job to protect this country.

The change proposed in this bill is needed, and it has my full support.

I am also pleased that this bill, as amended, includes the text of Congressman Cawthorn's bill, H.R. 4874, the Fly Vets Act. His bill would close a longstanding loophole that allows public flight training schools to charge an unlimited amount in tuition and fees for GI Bill students.

This bill would allow students to utilize a revolutionary accelerated tuition and fee model that would provide twice the amount of tuition and fees per

month for 2 months of eligibility. This is commonsense legislation that would protect both the student veteran and the taxpayer.

I thank Congressman Cawthorn for his hard work on this bill. I also thank Congressmen Wenstrup and Levin for their work on this bill in previous Congresses. I hope that this year we can get this needed change across the finish line.

While we are talking about the GI Bill, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss another matter. At least at the start of the pandemic, we worked on a bipartisan effort to ensure that student veterans' GI Bill housing allowance payments are not cut when their in- person classes converted to online learning due to COVID-19. The current authorization expires on December 21, 2021.

Chairman Takano and Congressman Trone are advocating for a bill that extends this protection, but it is not paid for. Instead, it relies on emergency spending to cover the more than $200 million mandatory score associated with the bill. I believe that is too high of a cost to consider through emergency spending and must insist that we offset the extension.

To that end, I introduced a bill that would achieve the policy objective but pay for the cost of the bill with a regularly used offset.

My bill also includes changes that are needed to ensure that GI Bill students can attend foreign schools. It would also give U.S. schools time to comply with the new reporting requirements passed last Congress.

A coalition of 18 higher education groups has advocated for these changes for several months and support my proposal. They understand that if these changes are not made soon, many schools will be forced to stop accepting students who are using the GI Bill.

I understand the chairman has recently received a letter from the chancellor of the University of California at Riverside, who agrees that this proposal must be offset.

Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox wrote that by passing the bill without an offset, we would be ``no closer to a resolution on this critical issue.''

The letter goes on to say that passing a bill out of the House without an offset ``will jeopardize UCR's ability to continue to serve our veteran students.''

The chancellor also stated that this fall UC Riverside supported hundreds of military-connected students, including about 179 veterans who could be impacted by inaction.

Unless I am mistaken, UC Riverside is in Chairman Takano's district.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the letter from Chancellor Wilcox.

UC Riverside,

Office of the Chancellor,

Riverside, CA, November 12, 2021.

Hon. Mark Takano,

U.S. Representative,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Takano: I understand that you are

planning to bring H.R. 5545, the Responsible Education

Mitigating Options and Technical Extensions (REMOTE) Act, up

for a vote in the House next week. The bill includes critical

technical corrections to address unintended consequences

stemming from several provisions in the Isakson Roe Act and

the Training in High-Demand Roles to Improve Veteran

Employment (THRIVE) Act that went into effect on August 1,

2021. The bill would also extend certain COVID-related

flexibilities granted to the Secretary of the Department of

Veterans Affairs (VA) in the wake of the pandemic.

As the bill is currently written, however, it does not

include an offset for the approximately $200 million cost for

the extension of COVID-19 flexibilities. I am deeply

concerned that without the inclusion of an offset, the bill

will not be able to pass the Senate by unanimous consent and

we will be no closer to a resolution on this critical issue.

During the Fall of 2021, UC Riverside served 179 Veterans,

37 Reservists, 11 National Guard, and 15 Active Duty self-

identified members of the U.S. military branches. Designated

as a ``Military Spouse Friendly'' campus, UCR served over 350

dependents, and have utilized over $6M in Veterans benefits.

Without an offset for the extension of COVID-19

flexibilities, it will jeopardize UCR's ability to continue

to serve our Veteran Students, due to the compliance issues

that require fixes. I would also urge you to include language

to modify VA's current ``rounding out'' rule to ensure that

more veterans can maintain full-time benefits during the last

term of their program.

I respectfully request that your staff work to pass

bipartisan legislation next week that addresses these

concerns and can be quickly passed through both chambers and

signed into law.

Sincerely,

Kim A. Wilcox,

Chancellor.

At our full committee markup 2 weeks ago, I urged Chairman Takano to work with me and our Senate colleagues to find a way forward on the offset issue on a bipartisan basis.

However, last week I was told that Congressman Trone's bill would be on the slate of bills, but the cost would not be offset. I registered my concern and was glad to see that the un-offset bill will not be considered under suspension of the rules today.

I do understand, however, that the majority intends to take Congressman Trone's bill to the Rules Committee the week after next and pass it out of the House un-offset through a rule.

Let me be clear, I support the policy, but I believe the cost of the bill must be offset. Schools like UC Riverside clearly agree with me. Even if the Democrats are able to get Congressman Trone's un-offset bill through the House--and that is a big ``if''--I don't believe that they can pass it in the Senate by unanimous consent.

It is the responsibility of the leaders of our committee to solve this issue so that the bill can quickly make it to the President's desk. Although the chairman may not like it, my approach is the only way to get this done in time to help students in a fiscally responsible manner.

The higher education community has told us that this extension needs to be enacted by Thanksgiving. I think we can see that under the majority's current plan, the deadline will be missed. After Thanksgiving we have only 9 legislative days left before these protections expire. We are simply running out of time.

I do not have a preference for whether we take up my bill or amend Congressman Trone's bill to include the offset, but I urge the chairman to come back to reality and stop playing political games with it so that we can ensure that student veterans are protected in a fiscally sound manner.

At the very least, I would advise the chairman not to let this inaction impact thousands of student veterans across the country, including the 179 right there in his own district.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, paying for something and doing the job that we are supposed to be doing here is not political gamesmanship.

I said in my statement that I believe that we must continue to provide for these veterans, but it is our fiduciary duty to do it in the correct way. That is what I am asking for. I am also asking for it because that way we know it will move through the Senate and work in a bipartisan, bicameral manner to try to move it forward.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to support the underlying bill that was discussed. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5603) to amend title 38, United States Code, to establish protections for a member of the Armed Forces who leaves a course of education, paid for with certain educational assistance, to perform certain service, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 5603, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 5603, as amended, the Protections for Student Veterans Act, introduced by Representative Underwood.

This bill amends the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act, which provides broad protections for Active Duty, reservist, and National Guard servicemembers during deployments.

H.R. 5603, as amended, enhances protections for members of the Armed Forces who must suspend their education to fulfill military orders.

Many States, including Illinois and Washington, have stronger student protections for servicemembers than those that exist at the Federal level. There are currently few Federal protections for members of the armed services who are enrolled in higher education when they receive Active Duty orders. These servicemembers can be held liable to repay tuition and may also receive failing or incomplete grades as a result of suspending their education for military duty.

I hope we can all agree that this is an unfair penalty to those members of the Armed Forces who are preparing for their future through education while also serving our country.

The protections proposed in this bill would cover unexpected withdrawals due to military orders and can provide restoration of benefits and reimbursements for classes.

This bill takes the best practices from around the country to make sure student veterans aren't left with debts or incomplete classes outside their control due to military orders.

This legislation is supported by numerous VSOs, including Student Veterans of America.

I thank Speaker Pelosi and Leader Hoyer for bringing this legislation to the floor, and I urge the rest of my colleagues to support this legislation to protect GI Bill benefits for servicemembers fulfilling their duty to our country.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am distressed that the ranking member has chosen this particular moment to inject comments about the REMOTE Act, sponsored by the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Trone), and to imply that there is obstruction in taking action to help our veterans, our student veterans, with their housing allowances--which we took action on during the pandemic, which still we are not completely out of yet. I would argue that we are still in a national emergency. We are seeing COVID infections rise in Europe, and we are seeing vaccine resistance and hesitancy in many parts of the country, which still necessitate the need for a policy which allows for student veterans to still get their housing allowances while they are taking classes virtually.

I will remind the minority that three times under the Trump administration, we passed something like the REMOTE Act, the authority to allow student veterans to receive their housing allowances while taking virtual classes. They were not in residence at the school where they would do in-person learning. We allowed this three times under emergency spending. Why? Because emergency spending fits the moment. And it still fits the moment. This nonsense about we have to pay for something that should be an emergency is nonsense.

I recall times on this floor when we had Members arguing that we should not pay for the damage done for hurricanes in one State because it didn't happen to the rest of the States, that we need to find a pay- for for hurricane damage in this country and for certain other kinds of natural disasters.

A pandemic is a type of natural disaster. In this case, it has killed 700,000 Americans. I would argue that we saved lives, and we relieved a lot of suffering of our veterans who would have been turned out in the streets if we did not give them this housing allowance.

And now at the eleventh hour when we intended to bring Representative Trone's bill to the floor, suddenly we had to meet a pay-for demand of the

minority, and to set a precedent for future disasters that we would have to have this very argument.

Instead of the precedent being that we spend emergency funds for emergency situations, we now are in a situation where the minority is arguing a ridiculous ideological argument about how we pay for things during a time of a national emergency.

I am disappointed that the minority has brought up its objections and also sought to use my University of California, Riverside as part of this pawn. I just received a message from my chancellor correcting the position that they took on their public letter. They are the only university to submit such a detailed letter regarding the pay-for. No other university has sought to take that position. I have questions as to how my university reached a point where they issued such a letter so that it could be used on the floor. I now have a correction that was issued to me just hours before.

This is about America's veterans, and this is about serving America's veterans during an emergency situation in which 700,000 Americans have already died. I want to keep those veterans safe. I want to keep them in housing. And, yes, I believe it is appropriate to keep the precedent of using emergency funding and not have this silly political gamesmanship over the pay-for.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I will just reply that it is political gamesmanship. I hate seeing universities used as pawns in this game. I hate seeing our student veterans being used as pawns.

What is at stake here is the principle, the precedent that this Congress will pay for emergencies out of emergency funding. The need to help our veterans, who must take their classes remotely, pay for their housing because of the national emergency that we are still in, is part of a precedent that we need to preserve.

This is not a political game to me. This is about protecting our veterans. This is about protecting our Nation in the future.

The idea that when a national disaster, whether it occurs in the form of a hurricane, an earthquake, or some other calamity like a pandemic that has killed 700,000 Americans, that the principle stands that that is an emergency and that we as a Nation stand together as one American from whatever State we are in to help an American in another State, even though that disaster didn't happen in that State. But this disaster was omnipresent throughout our country. I don't understand the logic.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask all my colleagues to join me in passing this very important legislation, H.R. 5603, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.