About the guests:

Bruce McClary is the senior vice president of membership and communications for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. As the lead spokesperson, McClary provides communications support for the nation’s largest and longest-serving network of nonprofit credit counseling organizations. He also manages activities focused on industry collaboration and membership growth. With decades of experience in the financial service sector, McClary often draws upon his direct experience as a debt collector, lender, and NFCC Certified Credit Counselor when speaking to journalists about personal finance matters. During his career, he has provided one-on-one financial counseling to thousands of consumers, trained financial educators, and reached millions more through print and broadcast media.

Shelby Myers is a military spouse and mom of two. Her background is in education, but currently she stays home with her kids and volunteers on base. Myers advocates for programs that support military families, and small businesses of all kinds. She spends her time exploring, blogging and enjoying everything the military throws at her.

About the podcast:

The Spouse Angle is a podcast breaking down the news for military spouses and their families. Each episode features subject-matter experts and military guests who dive into current events from a military perspective — everything from new policy changes to research on family lifestyle challenges. The podcast is hosted by Natalie Gross, a freelance journalist and former Military Times reporter who grew up in a military family.

Follow The Spouse Angle on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

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Subscribe on Stitcher.

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But now, lawmakers for the U.S. territory have unanimously voted to end this practice after other government employees complained about being overlooked, the Guam Daily Post reports.

According to the testimony of one of the island’s top firefighters, a veteran of the Coast Guard and Army National Guard, the current law giving veterans a 5-point preference over other applicants during the hiring process for government jobs was well intended. But, he said, it went too far by also giving former service members a 5-point lead for promotions because it “devalued the service and sacrifice of our very own.”

Another firefighter said morale at the department took a big hit last promotion cycle, when a large number of firefighters who had been deployed with the Guard and reserves came back and were promoted over others who had stayed and “held down the fort.”

Police officers and educators were also among those who advocated for the change in Guam’s law, which will still keep veteran preference in place for initial hiring decisions but will not apply the extra points for promotions. This is similar to the approach taken at the federal level, which grants 5 points to most veterans and 10 points to those with a service-connected disability or a Purple Heart, but does not apply these points to promotions, transfers or other changes once a person is already employed.

The Guam Federation of Teachers said in a statement that the best employees are the ones who should get ahead.

“GFT believes that once employed with the government, continued employment and advancement must be based on the value of service, skills, qualifications and character of the employee for the efficiency of government service,” according to the statement.

In a New York Times op-ed this week, the groups write that President Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, has “elected to eviscerate student protections and quality controls for colleges — particularly those governing the often low-quality, predatory for-profit colleges that target veterans in their marketing schemes.”

DeVos has come under criticism for her ties to the for-profit sector — and her lack of experience in government and public education — since her nomination as education secretary, and she has overseen efforts to undo Obama-era higher education rules.

Notably, despite significant opposition from vets groups and others, DeVos eliminated a rule that held for-profit colleges accountable for their graduates’ ability to find gainful employment. James Schmeling, executive vice president of Student Veterans of America, and Carrie Wofford, president of Veterans Education Success, write that the secretary has also fought, and is now stalling, a rule that clarified how students defrauded by schools could seek loan forgiveness.

DeVos also recently reinstated the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, or ACICS, which her predecessors had stopped recognizing because they said it did too little to hold schools accountable. Among those schools were the Corinthian Colleges and ITT Technical Institute, which each closed suddenly, in 2015 and 2016 respectively, leaving thousands of student veterans in the lurch.

Their demise, which left students stranded with substantial student debt and credits that other schools may not recognize, became the impetus for a provision in the new Forever GI Bill law that restores education benefits to veteran victims of abrupt school closures.

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment by press time, but department spokeswoman Liz Hill said in a statement to Inside Higher Ed about ACICS that a federal judge had found the Obama administration had failed to consider all of the evidence, and the department could not enforce an “invalid” decision.

Hill has also told Military Times previously that the department’s aim is to protect students from predatory practices, but the Obama administration’s rulemaking had “led to a cumbersome and confusing process that’s unfair to students and schools, and puts taxpayers on the hook for significant costs.”

Schmeling and Wofford take a special interest in DeVos’ actions related to for-profit colleges because although federal law states that these schools must not receive more than 90 percent of their funding from federal student loans and grants, some take advantage of an exception that considers GI Bill funds as private dollars.

And by cutting back accountability for for-profit schools, Schmeling and Wofford argue that the country’s top education official has undermined the value of the GI Bill.

“Politicians of both stripes speak out for veterans on the campaign trail. It’s time to back up that talk with bipartisan oversight of colleges that seek GI Bill funding, bipartisan legislation to close the 90/10 loophole and a bipartisan hearing that puts serious questions to the Education Department’s leadership,” they write. “The public supports standing up for our military. Congress can start by standing up to Secretary DeVos.”

And because he works for the Department of Agriculture’s U.S. Forest Service, one of the agencies impacted by the ongoing government shutdown, come Friday, the former military police officer is about to find out what it’s like to live on no paycheck at all.

“Now we’re looking at our usual bills. We’re being very conservative [about] whether we’re going to pay them on time or not, depending on how the shutdown goes forward,” said Shanley-Dillman, a planner for the Huron-Manistee National Forests in Michigan. “Food and shelter first.”

Nearly a third of the federal workforce is made up of veterans — an estimated 248,400 of whom are not getting paychecks as the government is three weeks into a partial shutdown, according to the AFL-CIO Union Veterans Council.

“Stress levels are going up. The mental fatigue is going up,” said William Attig, the council’s executive director. “This is, in my opinion, a recipe for disaster for some of these veterans.”

The impacted federal agencies employing the largest proportions of veterans include the Homeland Security, Transportation and Justice departments, where veterans make up 25 percent or more of the workforce, according to the latest figures from the Office of Personnel Management.

These include border patrol officers, federal prison guards, Transportation Security Administration agents and air traffic controllers, among others.

“They believe that this is a continuation of service to their nation,” Attig said. “It is shameful that their lives are being played with as pawns from either side.”

In a tweet recognizing National Law Enforcement Day Wednesday, President Trump included a shout-out to federal law enforcement officers, writing, “We love you and will always support you.”

After initially saying he would accept responsibility for a shutdown, Trump has since blamed the shutdown on Democrats, who will not approve Trump’s push for $5.7 billion in funding for a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border — a plan also rejected by some members of his own party.

“This barrier is absolutely critical to border security. It’s also what our professionals at the border want and need,” he said in a televised address to the nation Tuesday.

In her response on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., highlighted the fact that the shutdown is hurting veterans, whom Trump has vowed to protect and support since the campaign trail.

“Our veterans are very adversely affected by this. If we want to support our veterans, we will not hurt their credit rating. And that’s what missing a mortgage, a rental payment, a car payment and the rest does to everyone’s credit rating,” she said.

Build a wall or don’t — Shanley-Dillman doesn’t care. He just wants to see elected officials come to some sort of compromise so that he and his other veteran colleagues can get back to work.

“I know some of them, like myself, have issues with PTSD,” he said. “Veterans just do better with a full-time job, a regular job. That’s one of the most impactful things that can help a veteran manage life. The shutdown on top of PTSD — it’s difficult to navigate.”

Attig said the Union Veterans Council isn’t pointing fingers or taking a stance on the wall funding, but the organization is strongly advocating for veterans and other federal workers to get paid.

“If we need to improve border security, we’re all for that,” he said. “But people’s lives shouldn’t be put on the line and held hostage.”

Lawmakers at a Capitol Hill hearing Thursday questioned whether the Veterans Affairs Department has the authority to change a major deadline for implementing a portion of the Forever GI Bill — and seemingly act as if the original one, mandated by law, never existed.

The questions from House lawmakers came one day after VA Sec. Robert Wilkie announced the department will hold off on implementing changes to housing stipend payments until Dec. 1, 2019. These changes to how the stipends are calculated were supposed to go into effect Aug. 1 of this year, a deadline the VA was unable to meet because of IT challenges.

And while VA leaders plan to correct students’ payments from this fall by paying a retroactive cost-of-living increase come January, VA spokesman Curt Cashour confirmed to Military Times that the agency is not planning go back and pay students for another required change, related to a student’s physical location, once the IT systems are finally up and running.

But in an apparent contradiction, the VA posted a statement from Wilkie to its website at 4:16 p.m. Thursday, after this story was originally published, stating that it does plan to make “each and every post-9/11 GI Bill beneficiary …100 percent whole — retroactively if need be — for their housing benefits for this academic year.”

Should the VA fail to do so, it would be going back on a promise VA officials had previously made to Congress. The agency’s own website states that “VA will correct any discrepancy between what a student was paid and what he or she should be paid once the technology fixes are in place.”

In an exchange with VA Undersecretary for Benefits Paul Lawrence, Rep. Mike Coffman, R-Colo., said, “You can’t simply change the law yourself if you’re unable to meet the obligations that your department agreed to and the Congress of the United States mandated by law and the president of the United States signed.”

An aide for the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs told Military Times Wednesday the committee is seeking legal justification from the VA and is awaiting the agency’s response.

The provision of the law in question has to do with the location on which housing stipends are based. The Forever GI Bill law requires that — as of Aug. 1, 2018 — students taking in-person classes be paid based on the campus where they attend the majority of their classes. Currently, housing stipends are based on a school’s main campus, which is sometimes far from — and may have a very different cost of living than — where the student is living and taking classes.

This change required significant technology updates for the VA, which is resetting “implementation of the law for the next year to ensure we get the technology and formula right to put veterans first,” according to a news release. The push should also free up resources to ensure upcoming spring payments to GI Bill users are more timely after reports of mass delays this fall.

Lawmakers and others have been sympathetic to the VA’s IT woes. Yet questions remain as to whether the VA can decide not to retroactively honor the difference for students who primarily attend branch campuses or other locations.

Lawrence said it’s unclear how many of the roughly 450,000 students using the GI Bill would be affected by this change in the law and what the difference in payments would be, should the VA calculate them retroactively next year. And while he mentioned a significant burden for schools that would have to recertify students’ enrollments dating back to August, he did express a willingness to work with lawmakers, schools and others to come up with a final solution.

Veterans education advocates who commented on the deadline change said they understand the need for the 12-month delay but still believe the VA should pay students under the law’s current rules when they can.

“Shifting the implementation deadline a year isn’t a free pass for the VA to arbitrarily pay student veterans less than they are due simply because it was unable to correct internal problems in time,” said VFW National Commander B.J. Lawrence. “I appreciated hearing the VBA undersecretary in testimony this morning address the need to make student veterans whole, and I pledge that the VFW will continue to push for the proper implementation of the Forever GI Bill so that all student veterans receive the prompt and full benefits they earned and deserve.”

Going forward, until the Forever GI Bill rules are implemented, students will receive what they would have been paid for housing all along, had the August deadline not been a factor. This means students will receive payments approximately equivalent to 1 percent higher than what the Defense Department pays E-5s with dependents. Any students who have been overpaid will not be held liable, the VA has said.

The VA’s Paul Lawrence said it’s unlikely students who don’t attend classes on a main campus will feel ripped off because not even the VA knows what they would’ve been getting had the IT updates worked as they should. They will be paid under the same process as previous years.

Yet members of Congress maintained the law must be followed.

“The law states what we must do on 1 August,” said Rep. Phil Roe, R-Tenn., who heads the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. “The question is are we going to follow the law? That’s the question. If we’re not, then we’ve got to change the law.”

Roe said he would seek more clarity from the VA off-mike.

“We will seek to work with you and your staff to understand whether that’s in the best interest of veterans,” Lawrence told the committee. “It’s not our intention to harm veterans.”

At a tense hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, in which members of Congress described the situation as “unacceptable,” a “massive failure” and “debacle,” VA officials were unable to tell lawmakers when they believe the necessary software updates will be complete, though they admitted they’re planning as if they will not be ready in time for the spring semester. These updates were supposed to have launched by Aug. 1 under the new Forever GI Bill law, yet the VA has run into major technical challenges and is still paying student veterans under old rules.

The implementation delays have also contributed to a backlog of pending claims at the VA this semester, and thousands of veterans have had to wait longer than normal for their housing stipends.

As of the hearing, more than 10,000 claims of an overall 73,000 had been pending between 31 and 60 days, said VA Director of Education Service Robert Worley; another 1,000 have already hit the 60-day mark.

“These veterans, as you know, are relying on these payments to pay rent and put food on the table,” said Rep. Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans Affairs Subcommittee Economic Opportunity. “It is no small thing.”

Worley explained that when VA was initially eyeing a July deadline to have its systems ready by Aug. 1, the department told schools to hold off on certifying students’ enrollment until the new technology was live. Because schools are usually able to do this in advance, and the software ended up not being ready to deploy in time, the VA “got six months of work in about two months,” he said.

Arrington and others were visibly frustrated at the IT issues that seemingly stem from old technology at the department, noting that little has been done to hold anyone accountable for the significant delays. His Democratic counterpart, Ranking Member Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas, accused officials of trying to minimize the problem.

Trump-appointee Paul Lawrence, VA under secretary for benefits, said the department has worked with veteran service organizations and members of Congress to help about 1,000 veterans who have contacted the VA in significant financial hardship because of these delays. Lawrence took issue with reports that paint veterans’ financial struggles as a widespread issue and said the VA has heard of no confirmed cases of someone getting evicted from their home as a result of late payments.

“You’re getting the old payment, but you are getting a payment,” Lawrence said of GI Bill students. “You are getting to go to school. Your schools will be paid.”

Students who have received housing stipends this semester — timely or not — are receiving those payments based on the location of their school’s main campus, as was the law before the Forever GI Bill passed last year. Starting in August, however, the VA was to pay students based on the ZIP code of the campus where they take the most classes.

Yet because the VA is still paying under 2017 rules, all students — even those taking all of their courses at the school’s main campus — are receiving inaccurate housing stipends that do not account for about a 1 percent cost-of-living increase. The VA has said it will correct underpayments as soon as possible and will not charge students for any overpayments.

Education staff members have been working overtime to process claims, costing the department more than $4 million so far, according to a committee aide. That’s on top of the $1.2 million the VA has already paid to contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, the company working with the VA’s Office of Information and Technology on this project. The staffer said Congress has allotted $30 million.

“After the hearing, I think it’s important we hear from VA how they are going to make students’ payments whole and how they are going to prevent this from happening in the spring 2019 semester,” Lauren Augustine, vice president of government affairs at the nonprofit Student Veterans of America, said in an email. “From Congress, we hope to hear how they are going to take information from tonight’s hearing on the consistent issues from legacy IT systems and lead modernization efforts for VA education benefits.”

Lawmakers gave VA officials a week to provide more information on a target completion and additional costs.

“It feels like an exercise in futility,” Arrington said. “Just about every program and every good intention of this committee — we’re trying to solve a problem and serve our veterans, and then it’s just more IT rigamarole.”

The unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans was 3.9 percent last month, on par with the national unemployment rate, which was unchanged. Overall veteran unemployment matched that of their nonveteran counterparts at 3.8 percent.

For all veterans and those in the post-9/11 subgroup, the unemployment rate increased from 3.0 in July. This was the lowest unemployment rate on record for the youngest generation of veterans, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data dating back to 2006. Experts warn against putting too much stock in monthly employment reports, however. The data on veterans comes from a much smaller sample size than the overall population, and can be volatile.

The U.S. added more than 200,000 jobs in August, primarily in the professional and business services, health care, wholesale trade, transportation, warehousing, and mining fields.

At least for now.

In the event that Congress doesn’t agree on a budget by the stroke of midnight tonight, the Veterans Affairs Department has a contingency plan in place for student veterans.

“What that looks like for GI Bill users — there will potentially be no customer service, but that doesn’t mean they won’t get paid, at least in the short term,” said Will Hubbard, vice president of government affairs for Student Veterans of America. “Certainly for a couple weeks they’ll be in the clear.”

According to information on the VA’s website, the federal agency will continue to process GI Bill benefits, including monthly housing stipends, in the event of a shutdown. However, the administrative branch of the VA that processes the benefits would be understaffed by the thousands, and education call centers and counseling services would be suspended.

“If you’re a GI Bill user, and you have a question — which happens frequently — if you call in, essentially you’re going to get a busy signal,” Hubbard said.

Hubbard said if the shutdown happens, GI Bill payments could continue for another two to three weeks. He doubts the shutdown would last beyond that, but if it does, veterans could find themselves in a tricky spot. In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days.

Navy veteran Alyssa Myner told Military Times she is relieved that the shutdown should not have an immediate impact on her GI Bill benefits, which she uses to attend Liberty University. And she has already received this month’s housing stipend.

“However, I’m worried that if it does extend further than three weeks, I will not be able to continue school because of the lack of funds,” she said, also expressing concern that if the government shuts down, she wouldn’t know whom to contact about the issue with VA call centers down.

Vacant VA counseling and call centers may not matter to veterans who have been in school for a while, said a Marine Corps veteran who attends George Washington University, just miles from where budget discussions have come to a standstill on Capitol Hill. But new student veterans may have questions about their benefits and need VA support, he said.

“If that’s not happening, or if that’s not able to happen, that’s a crisis,” said the veteran, who spoke to Military Times on the condition of anonymity. He said that if the shutdown happens, its timing at the start of a new semester would be especially problematic.

When asked for comment on this story, the VA did not provide information relevant to education benefits by press time.

Myner and the George Washington University student said they have not received information from their schools or the VA on what to do in case of a shutdown.

“I think my school’s administration is just waiting to see exactly what happens,” the George Washington student said.

“I think even just pulling it out of the student veterans perspective, just as an American citizen, it’s just quite concerning at how partisan these sorts of issues have become,” he said.