How to support the troops
THE LAST thing a soldier or marine serving in combat should have to worry about is losing a home in the ongoing housing crisis. But members of the armed services are at least as vulnerable as other young homeowners to increases in mortgage interest rates or outright foreclosures. An amendment by Senator John Kerry to a broader housing bill includes special provisions to help active-duty troops, reservists, and Guard members hold onto their homes.
The bill is one of several measures before Congress that attempt to redress the sacrifices that the country is demanding of service members who are facing, in many cases, more than two deployments to the wars, sometimes for as long as 15 months. Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, like Kerry a Vietnam War veteran, is chief sponsor of a long-overdue update of the GI Bill offering education benefits to veterans.
The measures are coming from Congress, not the Bush administration because it is still refusing to acknowledge the full impact of the two wars on the services. Administration officials, Kerry said last week, "are quick to have their photos taken with the troops, but when it comes to actually doing something for them, they're AWOL."
Under Kerry's amendment, service members' period of protection from foreclosure after they return would be extended from the current 90 days to nine months. Service members would get a year's protection from increases in mortgage rates, which during that time could not exceed 6 percent.
Webb's bill would provide tuition and fees equal to that charged by the most expensive state university as well as an allowance pegged to the cost of living, averaging about $1,000 a month. To help veterans with the even higher costs of private colleges, the bill would have the federal government match scholarship assistance by a college equal to half the difference between public college tuition and the private college's. Currently, the GI Bill payments cover about 70 percent of the cost of public higher education and 30 percent of private.
Some Pentagon officials oppose the Webb bill, for fear that its generous benefits will keep troops from re-enlisting. But the measure would assist the military in another challenge it faces: recruiting. Also, education helps reduce the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. A study released this week shows that it and depression afflict 20 percent of all combat veterans.
The cost of the Webb bill is estimated at $2.5 billion to $4 billion a year. That's about one week's cost of the Iraq war. Better education benefits and protection from foreclosure are the least the country can do to honor the sacrifices of its troops. 