(Great story!) Paul Rieckhoff: Vet Rewrites The Law To Help Others

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,140675,00.html

Vet Rewrites The Law To Help Others
Paul Rieckhoff | June 28, 2007

When Sgt. Patrick Campbell returned to law school after serving a tour in Iraq, his student lender told him that he was defaulting on him payments. Due to his deployment to Iraq, he had used up all of his permissible grace period. Unlike his non-veteran classmates, the lender was going to require Patrick to start repaying his loans the day after graduation. Finally, after writing dozens of letters and spending hours on the phone, he was told that the only way to restore his pre-deployment status would be to rewrite the laws. So he did just that. Patrick spent his final year in law school writing the Veterans Education Tuition Support Act (VETS) to help returning student-soldiers.

Today that bill was introduced by Senator Sherrod Brown (OH) and Representative Susan Davis (CA). This new legislation will fix the loopholes that were punishing young Iraq vets like Patrick. The Veterans Education Tuition Support Act, or VETS Act, will:

Require colleges to refund tuition for service members who deploy (or provide future credits)

Restore veterans to their academic status when they return

Cap student loan interest payments at 6% while the student is deployed

Extend the period of time a student-soldier has to re-enroll after returning from abroad

Patrick's story is reality for the thousands of other National Guardsmen and Reservists who are also college students. For these troops, deployment poses extra financial burdens - including thousands of dollars in lost tuition and overdue student loans.

more...

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com