[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18030-18032]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      VETERANS DAY AND THE GI BILL

  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, tomorrow is Veterans Day, and it is a 
special day for all of us who serve here and for all of our colleagues 
down the hall in the House of Representatives. It is a special day for 
veterans across the country and around the world and their families and 
for a lot of Americans who value the service and sacrifice of our 
veterans.
  Veterans Day is not Memorial Day. On Memorial Day we mourn and salute 
those who have given their all in service to our country. Veterans Day 
is really for all veterans, not just for those who have paid the 
ultimate sacrifice.
  I was privileged to go to college. I won a Navy ROTC scholarship and 
went to Ohio State. I studied a little economics--my professors would 
say not enough--graduated and went off to Pensacola and became a naval 
flight officer in the late 1960s. I ended up with Patrol Squadron 40 
out of naval air station, Moffett, CA. I joined my colleagues there for 
several tours of duty in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War.
  When we came back to the States from overseas, I resigned my regular 
commission and took a reserve commission and moved from California over 
to Delaware to enroll in the University of Delaware's Business School 
and earned an MBA.
  Literally the first week I was in Delaware, in September of 1973, I 
got in my Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with a rebuilt engine and drove up 
Route 2, Kirkwood Highway, to north Delaware to the VA hospital in 
Elsmere, which is about halfway between Newark and Wilmington in 
northern Delaware. I took my DD Form 214 in with me to present it to 
the folks at the hospital to see if I was eligible for any veterans 
benefits, and as it turned out I was eligible for benefits. Some of the 
benefits actually have their roots going all the way back to the end of 
World War II when FDR signed--I think in 1944--legislation creating the 
original GI bill. Among the things I was eligible for was a home loan 
in which the VA would guarantee a portion of my loan so I could buy a 
house sometime later, and I did. I was also eligible for some medical 
benefits, including dental benefits.
  I didn't realize it at the time, but the VA hospital there was a 
World War II relic of a hospital. The morale was not good and the 
quality of service was not good. If people in the central or southern 
part of our State needed access to a VA medical facility and they 
didn't have it there, they would have to somehow make their way up to 
northern Delaware. It is not like driving from one end of California to 
the other, but it is a hike. We didn't have any community-based, out-
patient clinics in Delaware or any other States either at the time.
  That fall, those of us who were enrolled in school who were Vietnam 
War veterans, and in some cases other wars, were eligible for some 
benefits. The GIs who served in the Vietnam war, including me, were 
eligible for a GI bill benefit which was about $250 a month. It may not 
sound like a lot of money today, but I was happy to get every penny of 
it.
  I continued to fly with a new squadron at the naval air station in 
Willow Grove, PA--the P-3 Squadron--and continued to track Soviet 
nuclear submarines in oceans all over the world as a ready reservist. I 
am one of a number of people in my family who have benefited from the 
GI bill. My father's generation served in World War II. He was a chief 
petty officer. His brother and my other uncle served in World War II. 
One of them never made it home. He was 19 years old in 1944 and 
assigned to the USS Suwannee. The aircraft carrier was in the Pacific 
Ocean when it came under attack by Japanese kamikaze planes, and he 
lost his life. His body was never recovered and neither were the bodies 
of a number of other people who I guess were on the deck of the carrier 
when the attacks occurred.

[[Page 18031]]

  Other members of my family in my Dad's generation were able to take 
advantage of the very first GI bill, which was signed into law in 1944 
by President Roosevelt. What happened in the wake of World War II was a 
very generous GI bill. At the time, you could go to Harvard on the GI 
bill, and it was basically fully paid for, plus you had a housing and 
living allowance. It was an incredible deal, and a lot of people took 
advantage of that, which is good. A lot of the folks went to colleges 
and universities, but others went to trade schools.
  I never really talked to my dad about this, but I am told that he 
learned how to do body work and to repair cars that had been wrecked. 
He went to some kind of private school or trade school and learned how 
to do that and ended up working at Burleson Oldsmobile in Beckley, WV, 
where my sister and I were born. He was able to somehow do a good job 
there and ended up working as a claims adjuster for Nationwide 
Insurance and ended up running the national school for claims adjusters 
for Nationwide Insurance.
  He was a guy with a high school degree from Shady Spring High School 
in Beckley, WV, and ended up, with the help of the Navy and the GI 
bill, with a wonderful career at Nationwide Insurance. He is sort of a 
poster child for those who were able to take that benefit and do 
something positive with it for their lives and for their families.
  In the wake of World War II, there was also an emergence of for-
profit colleges and universities and for-profit trade schools. They 
called them proprietary trade schools, and they did not always have the 
best interests of the GI at heart. They were not always interested in 
making sure that the GI man or woman got the training and the help they 
needed to qualify for jobs, to go out there in that day and age and be 
gainfully employed and provide for themselves and their families. Some 
of the nonprofits that operated were very good and did a great job, 
others not so much. They took advantage of the GIs, and ultimately they 
took advantage of taxpayers.
  Over a period of time, back then and in the years since then, on the 
heels of the Korean and Vietnam wars, there emerged an effort on the 
part of the Federal Government to try to make sure we put in place some 
market forces to ensure that the for-profit schools, or proprietary 
schools, that were offering the benefits of colleges or universities--
that that college or university would treat the GI fairly, the way we 
would want to be treated, and to make sure they got the benefits that 
they wanted and that the taxpayers deserved.
  I think on the heels of World War II, there was an 85-15 rule that 
said if you happen to be a proprietary school and you were using the GI 
bill to pay for benefits for somebody--say you had 100 students; out of 
the 100, no more than 85 of them could be there on the Federal dime. 
The other 15 GIs, if you will, had to be there on their own or pay for 
it some way other than through the Federal Government. That was an 
early way to introduce market forces into the benefits that were being 
provided so we would end up with schools that were working and 
providing training certificates or degrees that were worth the paper 
they were written on.
  More recently, something emerged called the 90-10 rule. The GI bill 
had come and gone. For those who got into wars in Korea and Vietnam and 
more recently in the Persian Gulf in Iraq and now Afghanistan--the 
benefits that are offered to folks who literally served and applied for 
the GI bill I think after 2007 or 2008--that is a very generous GI 
bill. We sent off about 300 Delaware Guard men and women 2 months ago 
from Delaware to go serve in some cases in Afghanistan and in other 
cases maybe in Kuwait and at different duty stations around the world. 
But I told them when they went off to deploy that when they came back 
at the end of their 6, 7, 8 months--whatever it will be--that they will 
come back to the best GI bill in the history of the country.
  Here is what they come back to if they have served for, I think, 3 
years. If they have served time in those parts of the world, they come 
back to a GI bill and if they went to a public college or university--
the University of Delaware, Delaware State, Wilmington University, 
Delaware Tech or a community college in my State or public colleges and 
universities across the country--they can go to those schools for 
free--pretty good, free. We got 250 bucks a month. They can go for 
free. Their tuition is paid for, books are paid for, fees are paid for, 
tutoring is paid for, and they get a $1,500 housing allowance. That is 
pretty good--very good.
  Just to make sure that we have some market forces in place to ensure 
that these for-profit colleges and universities are really doing a good 
job and not just taking advantage of the GIs or of the taxpayers, we 
have in place something called the 90/10 rule. It has been around for a 
while. The 90/10 rule says that no college or university--for-profit 
college or university, proprietary school, for-profit proprietary 
school or training school--can get more than 90 percent of their 
revenues from the Federal Government. But the 90 percent does not 
necessarily cover--it can cover Pell grants and things other than the 
GI bill. But the GI bill--a school can get all of their money from Pell 
grants, and students who are on the Federal dime and continue--Mr. 
President, I am not sure what is wrong with the public address system. 
I will try another mic. That is better. There we go.
  Today we have a loophole in the 90/10 rule that allows a college, 
university or a proprietary for-profit school to get 100 percent of 
their revenues from the Federal Government. It doesn't count the money 
they get from the GI bill. It covers Pell grants and other Federal aid 
but not the GI bill and not something called tuition assistance to 
Active-Duty personnel. I suggest that is something we need to fix. That 
is a loophole that needs to be plugged. No college or university should 
make 100 percent of their revenues off the Federal Government.
  The 90/10 rule is well-intentioned to make sure that market forces 
work, but I am sure that people getting their education from a source 
other than the Federal Government would ensure that the diploma they 
are getting--the certificate they are getting--is worth something and 
they are able to translate that into gainful employment.
  Several of us, including myself and Senator Blumenthal, have offered 
legislation to close the 90/10 rule and to really go back to the 
original intent--to say that no for-profit college or university or 
trade school can get more than 90 percent of the revenues from the 
Federal Government. You can add in the GI bill or you can add in Pell 
grants, tuition assistance for Active-Duty personnel, but that cannot 
exceed 90 percent--and educational entities' revenues. We need to 
restore that market force, that governing, if you will, to better 
ensure the integrity of these programs.
  So I would just say to my colleagues as we approach this Veterans 
Day, it is great that we are able to offer a benefit that provides 
free--I don't care whether a person is from North Carolina or from 
Utah; they can go to college free and get a housing allowance for 
$1,500 a month. But I want to make sure that when a GI--I don't care if 
it is Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines or whatever--gets their 
certificate or diploma, it is worth the paper it is written on and that 
they will in some cases be able to go on to graduate school or further 
their learning, but almost in any case that it enables them to go on to 
a job that enables them to be self-sufficient.
  With that, I am going to yield the floor to the chairman of the 
Finance Committee, on which I am privileged to serve, and to say to 
both of my colleagues on the floor here: My best wishes to you and your 
constituents and have a wonderful Veterans Day. I will see you all next 
week. Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I appreciate the work of the Senator from 
Delaware on our committee. He is one of the good people around here.

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