Restoring GI Bill Fairness Act of 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. WALZ of Minnesota. Madam Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Again, I thank the chairman and the chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Stutzman), for working to improve on a very good piece of legislation. The 21st Century GI Bill was an improvement and a recognition that our modern warriors, especially those in the Guard and Reserves, were shouldering an incredible burden in these current conflicts protecting our freedoms.

With that, the 21st Century GI Bill went into effect, but I applaud this Congress for having the foresight to look, if something's not working correctly, bring it back and let's try and work through it. I am very much in support of this piece of legislation.

I also again want to thank the chairman of the subcommittee and the full committee for their willingness to work on an offset issue, one of the very difficult things that we have to do, and I applaud you for taking it head-on. We all understand the challenge of the financial situation and the need to make sure that every penny of the taxpayer's dollar is watched over carefully. I certainly don't think anyone wants to shortchange our veterans, but we will certainly look and do all we can. I think the compromise that we reached is certainly the way the public would want us to go. I am certainly happy with those new ones.

I think what's really important on this is, listening to the chairman talk about the different States where there were discrepancies, we need to be very clear--and I think this bill does that--that these veterans are not New York veterans, they're American veterans. They're Texan veterans, South Carolina veterans, and we need to make sure that we get that in there correctly.

There were a few issues that I think we can continue to talk about that came up from the VA themselves in implementation of the bill. I hope we continue, as I am sure we will in our committee and others, to keep focusing on that to make sure that we can get it in and make sure there is not a delay to our servicemembers. They deserve to have it done on time.

Again, this is a good piece of legislation. We took on a challenging subject, the willingness to correct something that was needed to be corrected, and then the willingness to find the pay-for that was necessary. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for that.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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