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Good benefit gone bad

The Post-9/11 GI Bill, one of the most generous military benefits programs ever created, launched Aug. 1 with the promise of making a college education an affordable reality for a new generation of veterans.

Just four months later, the Veterans Affairs Department has turned the enterprise into a fiasco. Because of VA’s failure to address the predictable influx of applicants, tens of thousands of vets have not received their benefits and many may have to leave college.

VA issued one-time $3,000 emergency payments to tide over vets who had not received the living stipends and textbook allowances to which they were entitled under the new GI Bill.

But with the spring semester just weeks away, VA is still taking an average of 47 days to process claims — the pre-launch estimate was 20 to 24 days — and some 26,000 student-veterans have not received any benefits payments.

School officials say many may be forced to drop out because they can’t afford to keep paying out of their own pockets.

in the months leading up to the Aug. 1 launch, VA officials repeatedly assured lawmakers and veterans that all was in order.

Now VA officials say they hope improved claims procedures and the “brute force” of hiring more claims processors will help clear the backlog before the spring semester.

They “hope”? Student-veterans deserve far better. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki must be candid with Congress about exactly what resources he needs to fix this, and lawmakers must deliver.

But not without accountability. If the VA officials running the program — the ones who issued those soothing assurances that all was in order — can’t straighten out this mess, then they should be replaced.