The Veterans’ Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 (S. 1315) finally passed the Senate last week by a vote of 96 to 1.  The legislation was approved by the Veterans’ Affairs Committee in June 2007 and reported to the full Senate in August.

The only sticking point in the bill was debate on an amendment to strip a provision that would authorize $220 million to increase and expand VA benefits for Filipino World War II veterans residing in the Philippines.  With Veterans’ Committee Chairman Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii leading the charge, the amendment was defeated by a vote of 56 to 41.

Sen. Akaka applauded passage of the bill and the amendment’s defeat.  “The Filipino veterans of World War II fought bravely under U.S. military command, helping us win the war only to lose their veteran status by an Act of Congress.  I commend my colleagues for supporting those veterans who stood with us."

Akaka continued, "I am also very pleased that the Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 can finally move forward.  This bill makes needed improvements to veterans' benefits by expanding and increasing support for veterans, their families, and their survivors.  I urge my colleagues in the House to act swiftly on this much needed bill."

The Veterans Benefits Enhancement Act of 2007 also includes a multitude of improvements to veterans' benefits, including provisions to:

• Provide retroactive traumatic injury coverage under SGLI for qualifying injuries incurred between October 7, 2001 and December 1, 2005;
• Authorize SGLI coverage for members of the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR);
• Raise the VA home mortgage life insurance rates to $200,000 by 2012;
• Accelerate award of special adaptive housing benefits to certain currently serving servicemembers (including burn victims) likely to be released from active duty due to the extent of their disabilities;
• Increase supplemental burial benefits to $2100 in the case of a service-connected death and $900 for a non-service connected death;and,
• Allow troops called to active duty for not less than 90 days to cancel or suspend their cell phone contracts without incurring early termination or reactivation fees.

The Pentagon’s official for military personnel policy participated in a conference call with online journalists last week to discuss the Defense Department’s system of granting waivers that allows recruits who may have been rejected in the past to enlist.

Bill Carr, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Military Personnel Policy said the system is working well and that service members who wear the uniform thanks to waivers are performing well.

“The vast majority of the conduct waivers are misdemeanors and a litany of three-or-more traffic offenses. And, with that, there are some felony arrests and a few felony convictions,” Carr said.

The waivers he is referring to don’t represent hardened criminals, he added, but rather people who participated in childhood pranks.

“But, in every case, if their community has joined behind them and offered their support, then the recruiter might, if we’ve got a strong candidate in terms of their other attributes, send it up for a waiver,” he said.

The conference call came after the House Committee on Oversight and Government Affairs sent a letter to Dr. David Chu, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness requesting information on the waiver system.

The letter from Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., stated that there was a rapid rise in 2007 in the number of waivers the Army and Marine Corps granted to recruits convicted of serious felonies, such as aggravated assault and burglary.

Waxman’s letter continued, “I understand there can be valid reasons for personnel waivers and recognize the importance of providing opportunities to individuals who have served their sentences and rehabilitated themselves.  At the same time, concerns have been raised that the significant increase in the recruitment of persons with criminal records is a result of the strain put on the military by the Iraq War and may be undermining military readiness.”

The Army’s felony waivers rose from 249 in 2006 to 511 in 2007, while the Marine Corps’ rose from 208 to 350 for the same period.  However, taken in context of the 180,000 recruits the military signed up in fiscal 2007, the number of waivers is relatively small. 

No matter.  Waxman’s probe is intensifying.  Although the Pentagon was unable to provide his committee with any information on criminal waivers before 2006, Waxman has requested any Defense Department documents pertaining to waivers going back to 2001.  He also asked for any information about how the increase in waivers has related to meeting recruitment goals and about the performance of the recruits who got the waivers.

This is not the first time the question of performance by a waivered recruit has arisen.  At a hearing in February, members of the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee focused on the quality of military recruits.  At that time, Dr. Chu cited an Army study that showed recruits that were granted moral waivers "performed as well or even better" than other soldiers while in service.

Earlier this year, the Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr., said that the Army thoroughly reviews every potential waiver.  He also said that those who receive waivers, once they join the Army, generally perform well, although they have higher rates of disciplinary actions than other soldiers.

Carr expanded on that in his conference call.  “Last year’s [waivered enlistees] proved to perform; they retained as well as the non-waivered counterparts, and they wouldn’t be retained if they weren’t performing,” he said.  “They are doing as well as the non-waiver crowd. Therefore, we are making correct bets on the risks that we take for someone that has done something that was that much of an aberration against what we expect of our teenagers.”

If people with behavior or medical problems did make it to a training base, Carr noted, officials there would be quick to notice.  “And, if it were creating a problem,” he said, “my knowledge of the institution tells me that the training base isn’t going to put up with it, and that practice in recruiting is going to change, and we would have heard about it.”

He also said that tattoos are an issue in military recruiting.  He noted that all of the services have adopted the same standard for what types of tattoos are and aren’t allowed.

“Show me the tattoo,” Carr said.  “I’m going to check it against a book of gangs, and in the event that you have [a gang-related tattoo], you almost certainly are going to be disqualified.”

Though up to about a year ago, gang affiliation wasn’t seen as a disqualification for entry into the Army, Carr said, the Army has uniformly adopted this policy with the other services.  Another disqualification for entry into any of the branches of service is the presence of a tattoo that is affiliated with a hate group.

Carr acknowledged that the Army has allowed waivers for recruits who have tattoos on visible parts of their bodies, such as on their hands and neck . “You begin limiting your market based on the kind of body art that a particular generation would apply to themselves,” he said.

However, Carr said, despite the use of waivers, the standards for who the services can accept remain the same.

“We insist that the services -- every one of them, every year -- draw 60 percent from the top half [of potential recruits], and most of them are exceeding it,” he said.  “Army’s just about exactly at 60 percent.  Our goal is a high-performing military

 

The Week Ahead

Subcommittees of the Senate Armed Services Committee will meet in closed session this week to start the markup of the fiscal 2009 defense authorization bill.

President Bush requested $515.4 billion for the Defense Department for fiscal 2009 – a $36 billion increase over the $479.5 billion approved by Congress for fiscal 2008.

Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said that Democrats are strategizing about which Iraqi-related proposals they will try to include in the authorization bill.  Two that have been mentioned are a provision that will force the Iraqi government to pay for its reconstruction costs and a proposal to shift U.S. military policy in Iraq to a supporting role behind Iraqi security forces.

Although the military policy shift has been defeated on the Senate floor numerous times, Sen. Levin said he is prepared to introduce it again. 

There is also an indication that Democrats are prepared to add language that expands federal hate crime laws.  Sen. Levin said, “It's very appropriate to this bill, as American fighting men and women put their uniforms on for values of this country. ... This is one of the values of this country — diversity and tolerance.  Hate crimes run smack against what the men and women of American armed forces fight for.”

Well said, but this is the same amendment conferees stripped from last year’s defense authorization bill after President Bush threatened to veto it if the language was included.

Meanwhile, both the House and Senate leadership are debating on how to move the fiscal 2008 emergency supplemental spending bill.

The leadership is caught once again between anti-war Democrats, Republicans opposed to domestic add-ons and the need to fund the troops.  Add the White House’s threat to veto any bill containing domestic add-ons and the task becomes even more difficult.   Did I mention that are only about a dozen scheduled legislative days remaining before the Memorial Day recess?

Look for an update to this pickle in next week’s Newsletter.