The newest legislation in federal education assistance programs for veterans, the Post 9/11 GI Bill, effective since Aug. 1, has created an influx of applications throughout the nation and the necessity for revisions to Wisconsin’s own GI Bill leading to inconsistencies between federal and state assistance for student veterans.

The bill provides tuition, supplies and housing assistance for veterans who have served on active duty since Sept. 11, 2001.

Since its passing, the bill has caused a surge of applications and resulted in increasing processing time as well as delayed benefits nationwide. As a result, Veterans Affairs is providing $3,000 advances for eligible veterans.

In response, UW has been working to inform student veterans of the availability of these advanced payments, said UW spokesperson John Lucas.

Gerald Kapinos, president of Vets for Vets, attributed the slow processing of applications by the VA to an increase in work due to a very labor-intensive process for assessments.

Although veterans nationwide are being affected, Kapinos noted many Wisconsin student veterans are not among them, opting to remain under the old federal program while awaiting changes to the Wisconsin GI Bill.

The Wisconsin GI Bill is a state education assistance program that waives 100 percent of tuition and fees for student veterans who have entered the military from Wisconsin, Kapinos said. So while most veterans benefit from the revisions of the Post 9/11 GI Bill, Wisconsin veterans might not.

“Most people in the country are going to look at the old one and the new one and they are going to switch. In Wisconsin, it’s not that case,” he said.

But, the Wisconsin GI Bill is also changing, Kapinos said. Starting spring semester, new legislation requires all Wisconsin student veterans to switch to the post 9/11 GI Bill to also receive the benefits of the Wisconsin GI Bill.

Among these changes, Daniel Dreher, vice president and treasurer of Vets for Vets, described the insertion of a clause outlining the relationship of the use of federal benefits and state benefits as a “slipping in of legislation.”

As a Wisconsin student veteran uses federal benefits from the post 9/11 GI Bill, under the new clause, this use will automatically deduct their potential benefits from the Wisconsin GI Bill. So, as the 36-month maximum use of benefits from the post 9/11 GI Bill is used, the 128 credit maximum of the Wisconsin GI Bill is also exhausted, Kapinos said.

“Essentially what it is, is when you use a federal benefit it is exhausting your state benefit, which are two separate things, so now you are tying them together in some kind of a knot. To tie them together where one exhausts the other doesn’t make sense,” he said.

So while the revision of federal and state assistance programs provided positive benefits for Wisconsin veterans, Vets for Vets members see potential complications.

“If you are getting charged the state benefit for using the federal benefit, then you are not really gaining anything from the state. The state is giving you essentially nothing, but saying they are,” said Dreher.