[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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