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Pentagon starts new benefits push

Defense officials and lawmakers are forging ahead on a plan that would allow all troops — not just a few in critical skills — to transfer unused GI Bill education benefits to family members.

The proposal is one of several family-friendly initiatives tucked into the tail end of President Bush’s State of the Union address that the Defense Department calls the Military Community Initiatives Program.

The two other pillars of the plan would give military spouses hiring preference for federal job openings and expand child care through joint ventures with local communities.

The GI Bill proposal is moving quickly; Bill Carr, deputy undersecretary of defense for military personnel policy, said he believes a finished proposal will be ready this month. The program for the National Guard and reserves, he said, will “probably parallel” the active-duty program.

Two bills that have been introduced in Congress might move even faster. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s bill has been pending since 2007, but the Maryland Republican plans to introduce an amended version very soon. A similar bill was introduced in the Senate on Jan. 30 by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

The other initiatives are just getting off the ground. Bush called for the creation of new hiring preferences for military spouses on Jan. 28. By Feb. 1, Kathleen Ott, of the Pentagon’s Office of Civilian Personnel Policy, had met with her counterpart in the White House’s Office of Personnel Management to talk about the concept.

There is a hiring preference program for spouses now, but only for Defense Department jobs, Ott said.

“What we are looking to see is if we can extend the preference to all the federal agencies ... and to also facilitate [spouses’] entry into federal service for the first time” — a process that can be daunting, she said.

The rationale for the change is fairly simple: Military spouses are often on the move and “often do not have a portable occupation which they can take with them,” Ott said.

Plenty of opportunities exist, she said, noting that the executive branch employs about 2.6 million people and hires about 30,000 each month. The worldwide locations of those jobs make this “a prime opportunity for job placement for our spouses.”

The program would cover general schedule, or GS, jobs only, Ott said.

The program is a “priority for us,” she said, but she could not say how long it could take to launch because it will probably require legislative authority.

The spouse career enhancement plan has two other pieces not specifically mentioned by Bush.

One would expand a job training program that offers spouses of troops in grades E-1 through E-5 and O-1 through O-3 $3,000 a year for up to two years to pay for books, tuition, equipment, credentialing and other education and training expenses. That is now a three-year pilot program at 18 military bases; the Pentagon proposes to expand it to all military spouses within the next two years.

The other proposal would create internships with federal agencies for military spouses that could potentially result in direct civil service appointments. The jobs would be in “mission-critical” areas such as human resources, financial management and information technology, Ott said.

As a hiring incentive, the Defense Department might pay spouses’ salaries in the first year.

“We want to focus on careers, not just jobs,” said Jane Burke, principal director for the Pentagon’s Office of Military Community and Family Policy.

At the moment, only spouses of active-duty members are being considered for the preference and intern programs, personnel officials said.

Bush also called for giving military families expanded access to child care, and the Pentagon says it will do so on two tracks.

First, officials will look at whether they can build on-base child care centers more quickly, Burke said. Second, they will explore an expansion of ventures with the private sector, YMCAs and even state and local governments in order to create more capacity.

Defense officials also want to expand awareness of the Military OneSource program (http://www.militaryonesource.com), which offers information on child care, marital and financial counseling, and other services.

Transfer of GI Bill benefits is hardly a new idea; it was a top priority of former Sen. Max Cleland, D-Ga., who introduced a bill in 1999 to give the services discretionary authority to allow such transfers to immediate family members as a retention incentive.

The Pentagon strongly opposed the measure, arguing that it was the service member, not the spouse, who earned the benefit.

The Army began a pilot program in July 2006 that gave GI Bill transfer rights to soldiers in critical skills with at least six years of service who re-enlisted for at least four years, but limited the transfer to $18,000 worth of benefits, about half the total value of an active-duty member’s GI Bill.

Carr said the Pentagon position has changed, but only slightly. Leaders “weren’t widely or ideologically divided,” he said.

One side, he said, favored a benefits transfer to help family members; the other wanted the troops who earned the benefits to keep and use them.

“We were always close,” Carr said. “And with the president’s leadership, the balance tilted in favor” of the transfer option.

Carr said details are still being ironed out but that officials hope to strike “a balance between the merits of family and the merits of member education use.”

Bartlett, who worked with Cleland on the initial legislation almost a decade ago, told Military Times he was “surprised and pleased” that Bush included the policy in his speech.

“It’s the right thing to do,” Bartlett said.

The GI Bill benefit has a total value of about $40,000, he said.

“That’s far less than we’re investing in the training” of noncommissioned and commissioned officers. “If they have to leave to earn more money to pay for their kids’ education, it’ll cost a whole lot more to replace them.”