[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 74 (Thursday, May 15, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3076-S3077]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
By Mr. KAINE:
S. 2341. A bill to amend title 10, United States Code, to enhance the
authority for members of the Armed Forces to obtain professional
credentials; to the Committee on Armed Services.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, since taking office, one of my highest
priorities has been finding solutions to the unemployment rate among
American veterans. We proudly in Virginia proclaim a tighter connection
with the American military than any other State--and I know 99 or 98
other Senators would argue with me about that, but 1 in 9 Virginians is
a veteran. Virginia has 27 military installations, including the
largest naval base in the world in Norfolk, and all marine officers are
trained at Quantico. Virginia's map is a map of Virginia's military
history: Yorktown, where the Revolutionary War ended; Appomattox, where
the Civil War ended, and other Civil War battlefields; and the
Pentagon, where one of the two attacks on 9/11 occurred.
Our servicemembers in Virginia and nationally make a tremendous
sacrifice for our country, and we have to have a commitment to honor
these sacrifices and demonstrate to service men and women the same
degree of commitment as they have demonstrated to our country.
That is what makes the unemployment rate among our veterans so
troubling. Veterans who are exiting military service in the Iraq and
Afghan war era--especially enlisted men and women who may not have
college degrees--have an unemployment rate significantly higher than
the national average. In fact--a statistic that when I heard it really
stunned me--between the fiscal year 2001 and 2012, the Department of
Defense spent $9.6 billion on unemployment insurance payments--$9.6
billion in payments to men
[[Page S3077]]
and women who had exited the military and then couldn't find a job.
Obviously, these are men and women who served valiantly during the
longest period of war in the history of this country.
As our Armed Forces continue to draw down in Afghanistan after nearly
13 years of combat operations--and those combat operations are
scheduled to cease this year--we have to do everything we can to ensure
that these servicemembers can find a way to quickly transition from
military to civilian life and find good jobs in the process.
We know--and the Presiding Officer knows very well in his personal
capacity--that servicemembers gain incredibly valuable skills while
serving in the military. We make a significant investment as a society
in training each and every member of our Armed Forces in a military
occupation or specialty, many of which of have parallel fields in the
civilian workforce.
I have a child in the military now. Watching the degree of training
he undergoes--training that will be very valuable for civilian work
when he chooses to make that transition--and seeing the kind of
training his colleagues undergo as well convinces me of these great
skills that adhere in our military. But instead of making it easier for
these servicemembers to get credit for their skills that would help
them as they transition to civilian life, they are often continuing to
face roadblocks.
That inspired me to introduce my first bill as a Senator last year,
the Troop Talent Act of 2013. The Troop Talent Act required that
information on civilian credentialing opportunities be made available
to servicemembers during their Active-Duty training and that
information on military training and experience be provided to civilian
credentialing agencies to help them understand how the skills for
success in military life transfer directly to the skills for success in
civilian life. If you are learning to operate heavy equipment in the
military, get the commercial driver's license right when you are
learning it. If you are learning to be a battlefield medic in the
military, get physician assistant or nursing credits right when you are
getting that. If you are at the ordnance school at Fort Lee in Virginia
learning to be an ordnance officer, get the American Welding Society's
certificate after you take your welding class, put it in the personnel
file, and when you get ready to move to civilian life, you will have
credentials that will be understood by a civilian workforce.
I am proud that key parts of the bill were signed into law as part of
the national defense authorization bill we passed in December, and with
this information servicemembers will be more prepared to transfer into
civilian life. They will have a better sense of what skills
servicemembers possess as they enter civilian life. So the passage of
this Troop Talent Act was for me a first step, but there are many more
steps we have to take to tackle this problem of veterans' unemployment.
In speaking with military leadership, servicemembers and veterans, I
have learned there are some additional barriers to the employment of
our veterans that deal with how tuition assistance monies can be used
by those in active service. One is the cost of fees associated with
getting credentials while on Active Duty. Those costs of credentials
are not covered by the current military tuition assistance program.
Some military members transfer out of the service and they decide to
pursue a degree at a college or university, but others are ready to
immediately enter the workforce with the skills they obtained through
military training. Again, to use the example I started with earlier, if
you are a logistics ordnance officer training in Fort Lee in Virginia,
you take metalworking courses, you take welding courses, and those are
the kinds of skills in very significant demand in the American
manufacturing sector right now. Those individuals often have an
ability--they certainly have the skills--to get good jobs when they
leave. But they often lack something important. They lack the
credential the civilian workforce understands--in this case an American
Welding Society credential, for example.
Currently, the military tuition assistance program provides Active-
Duty servicemembers financial assistance up to $4,500 in aggregate per
fiscal year for postsecondary courses or degree programs. While you are
in service, you can take degree programs, and up to $4,500 a year,
those degree programs and courses will be supported by the military
tuition assistance program. But despite the success of this program,
certification and license fees are not allowed to be paid with tuition
assistance benefits.
So in other words, if you are in the military and you want to take a
college course, you can get paid. If you are in the military and you
want to pass a welding certificate exam to be a welder, the tuition
assistance program will not pay for that. This is a challenge because
these credentialing exams can cost significantly out-of-pocket, often
$300 to $500, and many of our enlisted men and women don't have that.
It is really inequitable we would allow Active-Duty military to draw
down up to $4,500 for college courses but not draw down one penny to
get a credential for a technical skill they maintain.
This is part of a larger societal issue. I think we value college and
community college in a way we do not or have not traditionally valued
career and technical education programs. So many of our programs--Pell
grants and Stafford loans, GI bill benefits--often can be used more
easily for community college or 4-year colleges than they can be used
for even the highest quality career and technical programs.
That is why today I am introducing the Credentialing Improvement for
Troop Talent, or CREDIT Act. The legislation will go into that military
tuition assistance program and expand the authority of the program so
that it can cover credentialing expenses for those military men and
women who want to move into career and technical fields. It will give
servicemembers the means to pay for credentials while they are still on
Active-Duty and before they transition into civilian workforce.
In addition, the legislation will ensure the credentials our
servicemembers earn are of the highest quality and that they are
recognized by national and international standards, and not offered by
shady or sort of fly-by-night organizations that simply want to pocket
money that our military men and women are entitled to in order to help
them get an education for themselves.
We in Virginia have seen firsthand how the skills and talents of the
men and women who serve our country can benefit our workforce and
contribute to our economy. We make a huge investment in our
servicemembers, and it is a disservice not only to them but also to our
Nation not to take advantage of the skills we bestow on these men and
women once they transition to civilian life. We have to, all of us, Mr.
President, stay focused on this. It is unacceptable for us as a Nation
to look in the mirror and say: Our servicemen and women who served in
Iraq and Afghanistan have an unemployment rate higher than the national
average, but I guess there is nothing we can do about that. No, we can
do a lot about it. We can make sure they get skills while in the
military that a civilian workforce will understand, and that those
skills can also carry with them credentials that will enable them to
get a quicker traction when they move into the civilian workforce.
It is unacceptable we are paying $800 million a year in the Federal
budget to pay for unemployment benefits for people who exit the
military and then can't find jobs when they do. We need steps such as
the CREDIT Act and others to bring down that veterans' unemployment
rate, to enable people to get the kinds of jobs that will help them
have a happy and successful life postservice, and that will enable
society to take advantage of the great skills and talents they have.
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