A Wisconsin legislator is writing a bill that would change current provisions in the 2009-2011 biennial budget that reconciles state and federal benefits Wisconsin student veterans can receive under existing GI Bills.
Kevin Petersen, R-Waupaca, is authoring legislation to allow student veterans to use federal GI benefits without losing any of their state assistance.
According to Gerald Kapinos, president of the University of Wisconsin Vets for Vets, there are many different federal GI bills a student veteran may choose to apply for.
If someone were a resident of Wisconsin before enlisting, he or she would also be eligible for the Wisconsin GI Bill, which pays for 100 percent of a student’s tuition.
Kapinos said problems arose because students who were registered for both the Wisconsin GI Bill and the federal Active Duty GI Bill were not paying tuition bills, but the government was not reimbursing their schools either.
According to Kapinos, the UW system estimated it was losing around $48 million every year due to this discrepancy.
To address this issue, Kapinos said one stipulation was included in the budget that would require all student veterans to switch to the new Post 9/11 GI Bill if eligible. The Post 9/11 Bill, which was enacted last August, reimburses universities for veterans’ tuitions.
A condition was added into the budget later, however, which said for every credit taken at a university using the Post 9/11 Bill, it would deduct a credit from a student’s Wisconsin GI Bill benefits, Kapinos added.
“We do not think that’s fair, that using your federal benefits cancels out your state benefits, whether you’re using it or not,” Kapinos said. “It encourages students to go to school out of state and come back later to use their Wisconsin bill.”
Petersen’s bill would change this condition, so the state GI bill would no longer be tied to the federal bill.
“This great country we live in, America, is defended by the men and women who are currently serving, and have served in the United States Military — our veterans. In passing my bill, we own up in part to the huge debt owed each and every hero,” Petersen said in a statement.
